I think you might have some trouble getting accepted into a Ph.D. program, not necessarily because of your age, but because of your rationale. Schools want their graduates to get jobs. It makes them look good. I think they'd be cool towards accepting what they might perceive as a glorified hobbyist. Your application letter will make you sound more like a romantic than a realist, and that won't look good for you.

There's no part-time Ph.D. It will swallow your life.

Its never to late to get your PhD. Ive read historians who followed pursued a career in law, then retired, got a PhD, and published in history. BUT, they are the exception, not the rule, and they already had graduate degrees in law (from places like Yale).

So your big problem is that you lack any training in history. That isnt going to kill you, but its not going to help at all. A lot of graduate level history is practicing the craft of history, as opposed to just more history, harder. Thats called "historiography", and its a pretty important aspect of history. More importantly, the practice of historiography changes as the field develops.

What all that means is that youve fallen "behind" by not getting a BA in history. Now, I assume you live in America. Here, you can either get Masters in history, or jump right into a PhD program. A masters degree can be like PhD prep, as it is at my University, or it could be some kind of research program. If you want to try and pursue a PhD, you need to get into a PhD prep program. Itll teach you the historiography, research methods, etc. Its important for some historians, and itll be critical for you. After an Ma, you can select a PhD university based on the professors their. See you need a Doctoral Mentor, somebody who researches a very similar topic, who can help guide your research (and whose research you can contribute to!) The doctorate will consist (in America) of several semesters of classes, then comprehensive exams. Once youve done that, youll be an ABD (some universities give out a M.Phil, which is an official degree for somebody who is All But Dissertation). After your comprehensives, youll write your dissertation, a book based on primary source research that is the "culmination" of your educational career. Your dissertation will have to contribute to the field, which is harder than it seems. A PhD itself could take upwards of 4-5 years, and a Ma is usually another 2.

Which brings me to my next point, the PhD is a serious commitment to the practice of history. Just as /u/Carol_White said, it will consume you. It will swallow you whole and change you. With a PhD, you will cease to be a financier, and you will become a historian. You can do it now, or you can do it when youre 50, but if you dont have the time or the energy to be consumed by your history, its not going to work out. The PhD is designed to turn civilians into historians, and it will truck no "weekend warriors" (no offense intended). Youre either all in, or youre all out.

I'm finishing a master's in history at an US university, and at my job I work with more recently-minted history PhDs than you can shake a stick at. So my two cents:

I don't think age will be an issue down the road. At my school it always seemed like there were one or two older folks in the history department coming back to school for a master's or doctorate. Not everyone was in the situation that they intended to start a professional career with their degree.

I believe most programs don't require a separate master's degree from their doctoral candidates. You'd likely complete all of your requirements at a single school. Sorta like how a lot of people who get their bachelor's never get a separate associate's degree.

If by "part time" you mean 20 hours per week, then, no. It's impossible. The first graduate courses you encounter will likely be survey courses. The typical survey course in my program (and I have the impression that this is common in a lot of similar courses at other schools) usually assigned students to read/skim a 200- to 300-page book per week, write up a 3-5 page review of it, and sit in class and discuss it for a few hours. And that's just one class. Three to four classes is considered a full course load. You could work through the program one or two classes at a time, but most programs have a time limit (I think mine is 8 years for a PhD).

To prepare for the future, I'd first make sure that my Chinese was excellent and that I maintained my proficiency over the years--assuming you know some Chinese. If you don't know a language, make it a goal to learn one. It's not uncommon for history PhDs to require 2 foreign languages. For master's it's typically 1. (But I wouldn't be surprised if this requirement becomes less stringent if not dropped completely by the time you're retirement age. It's sorta a throwback to a generation or two ago when it was assumed that all professional historians were fluent in French and German or whatever. In my own program, they recently downgraded the requirement from advanced proficiency to standard proficiency--essentially a downgrade from requiring 4 semesters of a language to only 2 semesters. Personally, I think it's a useless hoop to jump through because the majority of language instruction focus on conversational modern languages and for a foreign language to be useful to a lot of historians, they'd have to learn to read an antiquated version of that language written by a maybe not-so-educated individual with non-standard spelling and grammar. Two measly semesters of conversational German is useless if you want to read a 19th-century letter. . .)

In the meantime, I'd also recommend studying East Asia and the Six Dynasties! Read everything you can. Figure out what academic journals specialize in Chinese history and subscribe or check out back issues through inter-library loan at your local public library. Figure out if there are any pertinent academic blogs or listservs on topics you're interested in and read them. Figure out what academic conferences are out there in Asian history and attend any conferences that are held near you (most conferences are held in a different city each year). Talk to people there. You'd be in a room of people passionate and interested in the same things you are, and all of them eager to talk about it. Start doing your own research and start writing. Present a paper or two at an aforementioned academic conference--some academic associations welcome submissions from amateur historians. In short, just because you're putting off your degree for a time, it doesn't mean that you have to put off learning stuff, and contributing, and engaging with experts in the field.

So is it a feasible plan? I suppose that will depend upon you. It's of course totally possible to go back to school. But it's expensive, time consuming, and sometimes interests change over time. It will be hard, but it can be done.

There are more options available these days regarding distance learning. I know there are some master's programs in history out there that can be taken online. (I've never looked into doctorates online.) Your job may offer tuition reimbursement as a benefit too. I've known people who have finished PhDs while working full time. It will be hard, but maybe getting a PhD is something you can do well before retirement.

At that age I'll be too old to start on the academic path, of course.

Don't be too sure about that. One of my professors at uni didn't start studying history at university level until he was in his early fifties.

If you're in North America, then take this with a grain of salt, as my experience has all been in the UK and Australasia, but I'd encourage you to consider starting now. It will be hard work balancing full-time work and postgraduate study (I did it for two years), but it's worth it, especially if you have the flexibility in your job to attend conferences, and take blocks of time off for writing.

Start researching PhD programmes first. And write to people in your field, asking for advice. However you need to structure it, your first jobs are to master the literature and conventions (i.e. taught programmes) and meet people (conferences). The latter can be vital in finding a good supervisor.

If you get on to it now, you can write the dissertation, and start publishing articles and starting on the monograph over the next decade. You won't have the pressure of needing to publish to get employed, and if you do decide that an academic career path is the route to go, you'll still have that option.

Side question: why does one need a phd to "engage with experts in my field of specialization". Does one need a PhD to submit research to a journal?

I'm working on my masters in History and I'm 32. It's never too late if you want to take it seriously.

I don't think you are ever too old to pursue advanced learning. Keep in mind, though, that while wisdom increases with age, certain other brain functions do not; consider if there is a way to begin your doctoral coursework (tons of reading!!) sooner rather than later. Also keep in mind that elite programs will undoubtedly require you to know at least one language other than English, and probably two.

Consider what amount of teaching you would like to do during your doctorate. I do advise trying to find an MA/PhD program that funds you fully throughout your degree; do not pay for any part of your graduate study. They will pay you, and you will teach. If you attend a small private school, you will not begin teaching until later in your graduate career. If you go to a big state school, you will likely end up teaching sooner. Keep in mind you're not going to be teaching your research interests, for the most part.

Because you have some catching up to do, actually you might end up having to pay for your MA, and then apply to doctoral programs...I dunno. In any event, if it's what you want and you're passionate, pursue it. There's no such thing as time wasted in pursuit of knowledge.

Here are the things I would expect to come up (though academia 20-30 years from now may be quite different than it is today):

• They will probably steer you to a master's program. Masters programs are cash cows for universities because they rarely give financial aid and they are short term. I have a friend who got a Masters degree at around the age you are thinking of, because he thought the subject matter was interesting. It should be noted that though I was his friend, most of the other graduate students — who were all in their 20s — thought he was strange for doing so and he wasn't really considered part of that "life." (He ended up finding the academy to be fairly ridiculous anyway so he wouldn't have wanted to stick around for a PhD. It is probably worth noting that he was independently very wealthy so the money never was an issue for him.)

• A much more likely scenario is that they will steer you into their "extension school" classes, e.g. adult education classes with no real degrees attached to them. This represents no risk on their part (you pay for the courses by credits, they are not committing to you in any way). This could be actually a very nice way to spend your dotage, if you lived near a good university. And I suspect you would be able to do this at a much better institution than you would if you pursued your original plan — Harvard isn't likely to accept a retired PhD student, but anyone can take classes at the Harvard Extension School, and the teachers are often the exact same ones that teach undergraduates and graduate students (they do the Extension School teaching on the side, and the assignments are not always as hard, but they are basically the same courses).

• A good deal of a PhD program is not taking courses or writing seminar papers. That is usually only a couple years. Most of the time is spent teaching, researching, and writing. Which you could do with a master's degree. Whether you would have any meaningful interactions with the other graduate students seems like a toss-up — even students who start grad school even a little late (e.g. mid-30s) often find they are quite disconnected from a lot of their peers (who start in their mid-20s).

It sounds like your in the US, which I believe works against this idea in several ways. Nothing I am likely to say here is new compared to the other posters, but I feel like repackaging it in my own way.

The US system is a long doctoral program that is difficult to complete part-time. It is overwhelmingly expensive, and is geared to producing career scholars, even though the US academic market is over-flooded with under-employed PhDs. All this makes it difficult for you to be accept - part-time would be horrendous, delay to retirement and you will be an unlikely candidate for them.

None of this means it is impossible or unattainable, but they are factors working against you! I am a part-time PhD candidate not in the US who pays no fees, which is really your ideal possibility.

What is a PhD? It's proof that you are ready to play the (Academic) game. the PhD is an entry degree to academic discourse. Is it essential? No, but the way our academic world is set up, those three letters buy you a seat at the table.

Here is what I would suggest, if you did want to pursue a PhD in your 50s and have a strong interest now. Make Academic History a hobby that you pursue with professionalism. Look around for a university at home or abroad that will allow some flexible approach to getting a masters by coursework, and take single subjects at a time. You could get a masters this way in 4 years. It is better than taking "interest courses" and not getting a relevant piece of paper, and it will give you an academic basis for entry into a PhD.

Are you dead from old age? If not, you can still do it.