I need to know if my plan makes sense or is realistic with the job market/reality. I plan on finishing my generals at the community college I am at, transferring to a tritonal four year school, double majoring in social studies education and history. Once I graduate Id like to teach at a high school for some odd number of years, attend a masters program that will hopefully be paid for by the school I am working at. Then Id like to pursue my PHD to be a history professor at a 4 year school. Is this reasonable/realistic? I have a serious passion for teaching and I also really enjoy history. The main reason Id like to be a professor at some point is because from what I understand you are able to put together your curriculum for the most part, and its more relaxed and you sorta get to decide what it is that you want to teach. (the way my history teacher explained it, college students pay for their professors knowledge and what the professor finds important about the certain subject). But yeah does this make sense? I just finished reading up a whole bunch after i posted this, and it seems that landing a job in history is kind of doomed and its a waste of a phd ://. Id be ok with teaching a community college but do you need a phd for that as well? Id love to teach but idk what to teach besides history, and more importantly id love to be a professor (not because of research stuff, but because of the teaching aspect) but from everything ive read it isnt possible. So im unsure of what to do now
Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No. The job market in the humanities is about as bad as can be imagined. Any tenure-track opening will have hundreds, if not thousands of applications. And more often than not, the position is filled before it's posted.
Many PhDs can find work as an adjunct, but that's barely minimum wage. Pay varies by school and discipline, but where I teach, it's about 3500 per class. Adjuncts are usually restricted to a 3/3 load, so if you're lucky, you'll teach 6 classes per year and make ~$20,000. And this will almost certainly be without benefits. NB: there are some schools that pay adjuncts more and provide benefits, but this is hardly the norm.
This quite old, but worth a read, as much of it holds true today: https://www.chronicle.com/article/graduate-school-in-the-humanities-just-dont-go/ (It's paywalled, so if you don't have access, the argument is basically that unless you have some other means of financial support (spouse, trust fund, lottery winnings, etc.) it's a bad idea to go to grad school in the humanities.)
RE Community Colleges, yes, on paper, most will hire you with an MA. Reality is that they get the same hundreds to thousands of applications for every position, most who hold a PhD. Unless the person is somehow stellar, they can't compete with the PhD holders.
It's really not realistic. The job market for historians is really abysmal. Community college is not a fall back plan and you definitely still need a PhD to teach at one. But the job market aside, I don't think this is the career for you. You say that you're not really interested in research. Without a passion for research, you will never be able to compete a PhD. Even if you did and you were lucky enough to land a job, any university you end up at will expect you to research and publish. It's a substantial part of the job. I think if you really just want to teach, high school is probably the way to go.
Someone asked a similar question last week and this was the answer I gave. The tl;dr version is that no, this is not a realistic career plan. The traditional academic career path of getting a Ph.D. and becoming a tenured professor simply does not exist anymore. As others have noted in this thread, every teaching job (even an awful adjunct job at a community college) gets hundreds of applicants because there are way more history Ph.D.s than there are jobs. If you have a passion for teaching, you should focus on the secondary school level, where there are actual jobs and you won't waste several years getting a Ph.D. that won't do anything for your career.
I would love to tell you otherwise, but I have to mirror other comments here. Academic positions within the humanities are extremely scarce and notoriously difficult to get. I'm mostly experienced with the situation in Western Europe so I'm not entirely sure how it translates to other continents, but acquiring a PhD position is already a challenge and acquiring a position that relates to the subject matter that actually interests you is exponentially more difficult. You have to be absolutely on top of your game, be specialized in a subject that's trending and get lucky. I only got a few chances due to the head of my department being a very unruly man who was in love with historiography.
The most common road towards a PhD and teaching position - at least from my personal experience - is to excel as a student at a university, assist the professor and wait until an opportunity arises. That's not a guaranteed career path though, so I would only advise that route if you are truly passionate about researching. I would even go as far as to say that in most people who are pursuing a PhD in social sciences are largely motivated by personal growth and not mostly not too concerned with the potential career opportunities that may come with it. I honestly think that some high school teachers have quite a bit of room to adapt the curriculum to their own sensibilities. Really depends on the school and country I suppose.
My high-school teacher was a great inspiration to me. While teaching, he wrote several conceptual and philosophical books on historiography. He also weaved his findings into his teachings, which is part of what made him an amazing teacher. It's not a coincidence that five students in my class went on to study history at a university, haha. So maybe that's an approach to consider? There may also be organizations near you that provide basic history courses for adults. That's another possibility. Still, research is an essential part of being a historian on nearly every level.