There are no jobs. The history job market crashed in 2008, recovered a bit in 2011-12...and then disappeared. Here is the graph from the AHA. 300 full-time jobs, 1200 new PhDs. Plus all the people from previous years without jobs and with more publications than you. Plus all the current profs in crappy jobs who have more publications, connections, and experience than you. Minus all the jobs not in your field. Minus all the jobs earmarked for senior professors who already have tenure elsewhere. Your obscure subfield will not save you. Museum work is probably more competitive and you will not have the experience or skills. There are no jobs.

Your job options, as such, are garbage. Adjunct jobs are unliveable pay, no benefits, renewable but not guaranteed, and *disappearing even though a higher percentage of courses are taught by adjuncts. "Postdocs" have all the responsibilities of a tenure track job for half the pay (if you're lucky), possibly no benefits, and oh yeah, you get to look for jobs all over again in 1-3 years. Somewhere in the world. This is a real job ad. Your job options are, in fact, garbage.

It's worse for women. Factors include: students rate male professors more highly on teaching evals. Women are socialized to take on emotional labor and to "notice the tasks that no one else is doing" and do them because they have to be done. Women use maternity leave to be mothers; fathers use paternity leave to do research. Insane rates of sexual harassment, including of grad students, and uni admins that actively protect male professors. The percentage of female faculty drops for each step up the career ladder you go due to all these factors. I am not aware of research for men of color or women of color (or other-gender faculty at all), but I imagine it's not a good picture for anyone.

Jobs are not coming back.

• History enrollments are crashing because students take their history requirement (if there even still is one) in high school as AP/dual enrollment for the GPA boost, stronger college app, and to free up class options at (U.S.) uni.
• Schools are not replacing retiring faculty. They convert tenure lines to adjunct spots, or more commonly now, just require current faculty to teach more classes.
• Older faculty can't afford to retire, or don't want to. Tenure protects older faculty from even being asked if they plan to retire, even if they are incapable of teaching classes anymore.

A history PhD will not make you more attractive for other jobs. You will have amazing soft skills, but companies want hard ones. More than that, they want direct experience, which you will not have. A PhD might set you back as "overqualified," or automatically disqualified because corporate/school district rules require a higher salary for PhDs.

Other jobs in academia? Do you honestly think that those other 1200 new PhDs won't apply for the research librarianship in the middle of the Yukon? Do you really think some of them won't have MLIS degrees, and have spent their PhD time getting special collections experience? Do you want to plan your PhD around a job for which there might be one opening per year? Oh! Or you could work in academic administration, and do things like help current grad students make the same mistakes you did.

You are not the exception. 50% of humanities students drop out before getting their PhD. 50% of PhD students admit to struggling with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues (and 50% of PhD students are lying). People in academia drink more than skydivers. Drop out or stay in, you'll have spent 1-10 years not building job experience, salary, retirement savings, a permanent residence, a normal schedule, hobbies. Independently wealthy due to parents or spouse? Fabulous; have fun making history the gentlemen's profession again.

Your program is not the exception. Programs in the U.S. and U.K. are currently reneging on promises of additional funding to students in progress on their dissertations. Universities are changing deadlines to push current students out the door without adequate time to do the research they need or acquire the skills they'd need for any kind of historical profession job or even if they want a different job, the side experience for that job.

I called the rough draft of this essay "A history PhD will destroy your future and eat your children." No. This is not something to be flip about. Do not get a PhD in history.

...But I also get it, and I know that for some of you, there is absolutely nothing I or anyone else can say to stop you from making a colossally bad decision. And I know that some of you in that group are coming from undergrad schools that maybe don't have the prestige of others, or professors who understand what it takes to apply to grad school and get it. So in comments, I'm giving advice that I hope with everything I am you will not use.

This is killing me to write. I love history. I spend my free time talking about history on reddit. You can find plenty of older posts by me saying all the reasons a history PhD is fine. No. It's not. You are not the exception. Your program is not the exception. Do not get a PhD in the humanities.

Images - https://imgur.com/a/hR9CCfB

Thank you My Great Grandfather in Egypt sometime between 1921-30

From watching Donald Kagan's Yale Courses Lectures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FrHGAd_yto), reading the occasional paper at my university library, and even browsing the answers on this subreddit, I've started to think modern academics have a pro-Athens, anti-Spartan bias.

It's unproductive to argue point for point over the benefits and drawbacks of the two cities' models, but even team Athens has to agree that Sparta made some major contributions to Greek culture, like producing the first female to win in the Olympic Games, or even sparing Athens when victorious in the Peloponnesian War.

Since ancient authors like Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, and even Athenian statesmen like Cimon praised Laconic culture, when did historians like Kagan begin to view Sparta as 'proto-communist,' or otherwise as a people skilled in war, but incomparable to Athens in significance?