I will start out by saying that much of the critique you'll receive is true to a large extent. Getting a PhD in history is a fairly hard slog. It will be long hours, lots and lots of reading, a fair bit of stress, probably a ton of imposter syndrome, and definitely lots of writing. If reading and writing are things you really enjoy though, the stress evens out a lot more though.

Second it is true that the job market isn't great. Your guarantee of becoming a professor is no existent. But that doesn't mean there are no other jobs. It's not that historians can't get jobs. It's just that academia in an R1 specifically is particularly difficult. There are however a plethora of other jobs, such as teaching at the community college level, high schools, working for libraries, archives, policy groups, think tanks, etc. It doesn't always pay particularly well. You're never going to be raking in millions unless you have breakaway success as an author. But it's not impossible to get reasonable jobs in the field.

I also say this as someone who has a deep passion for teaching... But if you do commit, remember that your interests can also shift. It is possible you'll fall out of love with teaching once you see it from the other side. But also, other things might catch your fancy too. Maybe you'd really enjoy editorial or publishing work? Maybe policy work catches your attention and you really enjoy it. There's a lot of learning that goes on at the PhD level too, especially if you're open to it and seek out opportunities.

The broad point of which is to say... If you do want to do this, go for it. Do it aware of the risks. Do it as you keep options open, make sure you've thought about potential backups and think about what other types of work you might enjoy. Always be thinking about how your qualifications might be harnessed to jobs that you might want to do.

As long as you are being careful. Are aware of the problems, and are committed to the task ahead, there's no reason you can't make a success of it. It can certainly help if you try and grow your skills more. Pick up a couple of languages if you can. Try and develop a somewhat global focus to your work so that your ideas can appeal to wider audiences. Try and think of research questions with wide interdisciplinary appeal.

But if you are keen about this, and this is a long held passion, then do it. Never let someone else prevent you from doing what you really want. Listen to advice. Heed caution and always be wary. But ultimately trust your instincts and do what you want to.

In terms of the job market, yes, aiming to get a tenure-track job in history is extremely tough.

According to the AHA (American Historical Association) in 2019-2020, there were 534 tenure-track faculty job openings compared with 986 individuals who were awarded history PhDs. There are a few additional factors to consider that make the disparity even worse:

1. Since the 2008 Great Recession, there have been hundreds of additional history PhDs awarded than there have been job openings. The Great Recession was disastrous to the humanities field at universities and colleges, and the job market has not recovered since then. With more students earning STEM degrees while overall college enrollment declining, the job market is unlikely to improve any time soon. This effect has a compounding effect: new history PhDs are not only competing among themselves for jobs but also with older PhDs who remain unable to find tenure track positions.

2. Only two-thirds of the tenure-track job openings eligible for history PhDs were actually in the history department. The rest were spread out in other departments, such as gender studies, religious studies, etc., which means history PhDs are competing with PhDs in other fields as well.

3. One-fifth of the tenure-track openings advertised in the U.S. were located in universities/colleges outside of the U.S. This may be a good thing for expanding the number of opportunities, but it also means those positions will likely be sought after by non-U.S. PhD students.

Another factor to consider is that tenure-track hiring is heavily dominated by "elite" institutions. 70% of Harvard PhD graduates are working in a tenure-track position, while for George Washington University (as a random example), which is a perfectly fine institution with numerous renowned historians working there as faculty and advisors, the percentage drops to 31%.

Non-tenure track jobs may be easier to get, but adjunct professors are largely treated like crap with low (or zero!) pay, little to no benefits, and limited opportunities for advancement.

Going by personal experience, I was in a history PhD program at an Ivy league school that had a top 5 program in my field. I quit after two and a half years because the time and effort needed for getting the PhD simply did not line up with the state of the job market.

Hi OP. I did my Ph.D. in the US and I'm now a postdoc in Europe.

Why You Should Not Get a PhD in History is an old but good (and sobering) summary of the major obstacles.

The other comments here do a good job summarizing the bleak job prospects, but honoring your love for the field. Let me add a few other points.

I went straight from BA to PhD, meaning I entered grad school a few months before turning 21. I'm 30 now. Who I am at 21, and who I am at 30, are very different people.

My priorities shifted over time. I'll leave out the personal growth specific to me, and focus on common experiences within grad school-- things that temper (sometimes strengthen!) grad students' love of history.

1. Start with the obvious-- there's almost no jobs! And the jobs that do exist have a very variable payscale. You won't break six figures until you've received tenure (if then). You'll have to move wherever you can find a job.
2. If you get a TT job you'll work long hours without commensurate pay, and with less professional autonomy than professors in previous generations. US Academia is organized similarly to the hierarchical, highly-competitive industries of law and medicine. For most of the 20th century, there was a tacit understanding that academia paid less than these alternatives, but afforded greater autonomy to professors. This is no longer the case. Academia pays less than similarly-organized industries and industry shifts are reducing research faculty's independence. Power within the university structure is being redistributed towards upper-level administration (admin deans, provosts), and away from department heads and individual faculty members.
3. After graduation, you'll end up moving frequently, and this complicates partnerships/families. The job market is very tough. Most above average scholars spend 2-4 years on the job market, moving from postdoc to VAPship around the country/world. Such a lifestyle presents additional financial hardships, but also strains on your support network.
4. There's more to the job than research and teaching. Networking is a big deal. If you're a socially adept person, and your advisor is both well-connected and not abusive to their students, you'll flourish! (this was the case for me). If not, your grad student life and job search may be very hard.
5. Finally... academic culture is not healthy. You will encounter social pressure to make "historian" your identity. (so that you can be overworked/exploited). You will encounter toxic peers and professors who are insecure and make others the same, or take advantage of others' insecurity. You may be "strongly encouraged" to donate so much free labor to your institution, that you have no time for yourself as a person. You must have strong boundaries to succeed in academia!

I say this as my department's "success story" (finished quickly, job out the gate, awards etc.) You CAN succeed in academia! You can even grow as a person in academia! But, you NEED a strong sense of self, a realistic view of the challenges ahead, and the ability to set and defend boundaries.

Good luck! And DM me if you want help with application materials, or I can help in any other way!

I would agree with most of the Debbie downer stuff people have said about the job market and grad school and add a few things.

-What is your field? The bad job market stuff people have posted is all true. It is even worse if you do U.S. history. If you check the AHA data over the years, the ratio of graduates to jobs is

-Horrendous in U.S. history

-Bad in European (although you can’t get into a good program unless you are coming in with a working knowledge of the relevant languages.)

-Not good in non-Western

Also, if you leave with just a masters and a working knowledge of say, Japanese, or Arabic (which I assume you have started already)…you can probably find some sort of work.

-Don’t trust your professors, or at least not your undergraduate institution. You say that your profs have been “incredibly supportive”. Have they not been telling you all these tales of woe? Do they really think your big senior thesis project (or whatever you call it there) showed that you could maybe cut it in grad school? Have they been working with you since at least Sophomore year to help you create some sort of class assignment you could use for a writing sample for a Ph.D. program? I say this because I know some profs (and all schools) who are quite unethical about this. If you go to grad school (or law school) you end up on their statistics as a success story they can brag about. If you ruin your life, well, that’s not their problem.

-Try to figure out if you will like grad school. Grad school is, as Tim Burke put it “cotillion for eggheads”..” Graduate school is not education. It is socialization. It is about learning to behave, about mastering a rhetorical and discursive etiquette as mind-blowingly arcane as table manners at a state dinner in 19th Century Western Europe.”

https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/permanent-features-advice-on-academia/features/

If you hate the stuff you have to do in grad school (and it is not just a few more years of undergrad, not even close) and are going to push through just to get that teaching job….don’t.

-Do not go to grad school for personal validation. It is a degree aimed at getting you an academic job. If you want to prove to yourself that you are smart, try getting to 10,000 karma on Ask Historians. Much healthier.

-Above all DO NOT GO IF YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. Any program that will give you even a remote chance of a college teaching job gives full financial support to the students they actually want. DO NOT TAKE ON DEBT to go to grad school in the humanities.

No one will say you can’ try—but try it with the conviction that your chances to actually land a job are really low, no matter how good you are. Especially try it if you can't see meaning in any other job and already know you'll only end up with lifelong self-loathing if you will not at least try.

Now, I am going to focus specifically on the idea of working in academia—university-level teaching and/or research.

Although I cannot speak for the particular system of your country in detail, the general, global trend in academia has been, 1. to cut budgets reserved for funding research projects etc. in disciplines without a practical application, and 2. to shift away from secure, long-term forms of employment to short/mid-term contracts of usually three to four years, which we can describe as the proliferation of project work. This trend also continues, and will likely get worse. As a result, if you really want to work try and aim for a job as an academic historian in teaching/research, you should make your peace with the following three points:

a) Possibly not finding a job in academia at all.

b) Even if you score one, possibly having to find a new job (or funding) every couple years all over again until retirement age.

c) To counteract the first two points, be always willing to work literally anywhere on the planet. (This might make things marriage and having children and so on a bit difficult.)

If you can make your peace with these three points, and you see a meaning (Sinn) in doing history, might as well go for it.

Others have already covered your question well. I want to give some of my experience with this very situation - from 25+ years ago.

I was working on an MA in History in the early 1990s and was planning to continue through to a PhD. My goal was to teach at a university. I experienced everything that people are talking about now:

• Everyone in the program knew that getting tenure-track teaching jobs was highly unlikely. We all knew someone who was teaching history classes at 2 or even 3 universities to make ends meet. Honestly, I think a lot of us just put it out of mind or maybe hoped we would be one of the lucky ones.

• I was hit hard by imposter syndrome. Partly it was warranted because I was doing Japanese history but was not fluent in the language. And forget about reading the language as it was written 300+ years ago. In retrospect, I think several other members of my cohort were also struggling with this.

• The faculty were great, but there was definitely even then a "publish or perish" mindset. IMO, teaching was secondary to writing your next paper or book.

In the end, I left the program to go work in Japan - thinking I would improve my language skills and then return to the USA to finish my degrees. I did learn the language, but also learned that I love teaching, and it doesn't have to be teaching history.

Now, I'm back in the USA and teaching ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) at k-12 and to adults at the local community college. I even taught a class in the ESOL MA program at a local university for a few years.

I miss History, and might go back and work on a PhD after I retire. BUT, I love what I am doing now and don't regret taking the road I did.

Point is, if you really want to teach, maybe don't limit yourself to history.

This thread is already absolutely brilliant and I’m only chiming in to add my personal experience. I also as an undergrad senior wanted to pursue a PhD and teach. I took a gap year, did an archaeo field school, and applied to PhD programs & a MA program. Fast forward a few years I’m in my late twenties working in a museum, almost finished with my MA. I have a good-paying job that I love and though I don’t do research or teach students I get to work with the public and share history broadly, and for me, it scratches the same itch I thought a PhD would.

This, by its very nature, cannot be answered formally, with Primary and Secondary sources, so hopefully someone does not utterly wipe it from Reddit lol.

So, I can't speak for anyone else, but getting my PhD was the most rewarding experience in my life outside of passing selection and my marriage. It is, however, rough; I spent a LOT of time away from my wife, stuck in archives, researching and writing. It's a battle, and it takes a lot of work. You have to remember that, while you're highly intelligent, EVERYONE in at that level is too, so your other intangibles come into play, things like your work ethic. I had an advantage after a decade in SOF (AFSOC) units in that I could take an enormous amount of mental abuse, including long hours and TA work, which is not for the weak, and keep pressing. Some kids didn't have that, and still managed it. That impressed me, so it is absolutely possible to

The most discouraging task I faced: finding a topic nobody had really done before. I'm an ancient historian, and I ended up writing and defending a dissertation on the impact of Roman Iberia on the Crisis of the Third Century, but it proved itself extraordinarily frustrating to develop the topic at first. In the end though, that satisfaction...man, I would wish that for everyone.

Job prospects are frustrating at first, and I worked as an adjunct for all of last year. However, now I'm tenure tracked at an SEC school, and I absolutely love it, so the prospects, from my experience, are not as bad as initially perceived.

You have to trust yourself and your instincts here. It worked for me because my background and supportive wife would not let me fail at it. I turned "That Others May Live" into "That Others May Learn" and kept grinding until the task dropped. I cannot tell you what to do, but I can tell you to really think it through, and trust your gut. With the support you have, I have no doubt you can achieve it, but you have to decide for yourself. One piece of advice I CAN give is this: do not take a school that does not offer you full funding. There is no way, with the GI Bill going towards my BA and MA (yes, I completed the MA before taking on the PhD because I REALLY hate exams) that I could have afforded a PhD on my own. Plus, the schools that charge tuition for it seem less reputable.

Good luck man. I hope to see you on the other side.

As the resident "prospective history Ph.D. student" bad cop, I'm really more in the honest advice business than the gentle advice business. You're not going to like the honest advice, but it's what you need to hear. Bear in mind that I'm telling you this as a recent Ph.D. (if 2016 is still recent) who's actually gainfully employed in an academic-adjacent job (research historian at a museum) and published a book that was read by dozens of people (perhaps as many as three dozen). I had about as positive of an outcome as could be reasonably expected, and I'm giving you this advice based on that experience.

DO NOT GET A PH.D. IN HISTORY.

The purpose of getting a history Ph.D. is to get an academic job as a historian, and those jobs, by and large, do not exist anymore. The job market tanked in 2008 due to the recession, kind of recovered, and then tanked again, even before the COVID recession and the current, ongoing recession. History enrollments are declining across the board, and as a result, when tenure-track faculty retire, they aren't replaced with new tenure-track hires; they're replaced with "visiting instructors", adjuncts, or not replaced at all (their courses instead being dumped onto other faculty or grad students). The overproduction of Ph.D.s and the decline of the history job market have been severe enough that American grad schools are pumping out about 3 Ph.D.s for every tenure-track academic job that opens up (that stat may be a bit outdated and it might well be worse now). Not only will you be up against that competition, but there's also the backlog of Ph.D.s from the last few cohorts who are still trying to get a TT job and who have several years of (miserable, adjunct) teaching experience and publications. Most TT jobs these days get several hundred applications, and almost all of them go to students from the top 10-15 programs. The odds are strongly, strongly against you in the academic job market. The traditional academic career path of get Ph.D. -> get TT job -> publish book(s) -> get tenure -> wear elbow patches and smoke pipe until you retire comfortably, for all intents and purposes, does not exist anymore. The trend of declining enrollments -> less hiring -> even more enrollment declines -> even less hiring isn't going to reverse itself without some kind of external shock. In all likelihood, by the time you finish a Ph.D., the academic job market will be even worse than it is now.

And no, the museum/library/archives world isn't much better off in terms of the job market, and those jobs will be just as competitive. This is especially true if you're going for a library/archives job without an MLIS and/or some type of relevant curatorial experience. It's not a good fallback option. There are a few government jobs out there, but again, you've got a ton of competition, and many of your competitors will have years of work experience and publications that you don't have.

*Billy Mays voice* BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Not only is the academic job market absolutely abysmal, but getting a Ph.D. is an even worse decision when you consider the opportunity cost of getting a Ph.D. The time you spend getting that Ph.D. (assuming you finish) is 5-7 years you're not in the workforce, not building up your resume, not developing marketable skills. And no, no matter what people tell you, getting a Ph.D. doesn't make you attractive outside of academia, because you're mostly developing soft skills that anyone with a college education could reasonably claim to have (the only real advantage would be if you developed skills in digital humanities i.e. computer/technical skills or became fluent in a valuable or strategically important foreign language). For the most part, businesses are not interested in someone who spent the better part of a decade in school getting a degree that isn't directly relevant to their business. The only job you're automatically qualified for is to be an academic historian, and again, there are almost no academic history jobs anymore.

What happens if you decide to ignore this advice? Well, let's assume you do finish that Ph.D., maybe even from a top-tier school. Well, you'll probably apply for dozens, if not hundreds, of jobs, and you'll be lucky to get an interview, as in one interview. I applied for 125 the year I finished my Ph.D. I got three interviews and two offers, and this was six years ago when the job market was better than it is now (but still pretty much garbage). It's unlikely you'll get an interview for a TT job, and even less likely that you'll get one. So what now? If you're very lucky, you'll get a temporary job as a "visiting instructor", but in all likelihood you end up in a place I like to call Adjunct Hell. Adjunct Hell involves stringing together multiple jobs where you hope to get a couple of courses a semester, making poverty wages with no benefits despite having a similar workload to your TT colleagues. Most adjuncts who aren't independently wealthy or married to a wealthy spouse are living hand-to-mouth and praying that the time they're putting in will lead to something bigger down the road. I've only adjuncted as a side gig, and I cannot imagine how miserable it is to do that as your primary source of income. It's not a way to live your life, and most people only escape Adjunct Hell by changing careers altogether.

You want to know how I managed to avoid this? When I was a grad student, I came to the [museum] to do research in their archive. I went to get lunch one day and happened to ride the elevator with a historian who worked in my field, and who was coordinating a project and seeking outside content contributors. I contributed some content to that project as I was writing my dissertation, since it was relevant to my dissertation research. During the last two years of my Ph.D., I had a fellowship, which hosted a conference at [museum]. I was randomly assigned a dinner table, and one of the people I was assigned to work with was the director of this project; during dinner, I got to tell him about my work and what I was contributing for the project. Later that year, as I was applying for jobs, [museum] was hiring someone to come onto [project] as an independent contractor, not even a full employee, and the hiring manager was the person I ate dinner with that night. I ended up getting the job and spending two and a half years grinding away making $36,000 a year in a major metro area before I actually became a full employee with benefits. Even as someone who finished my Ph.D. very early (I was 25), published my book relatively quickly (<4 years after graduation), and got on a decent career track right out of the gate, I didn't have a job with benefits until I was almost 29. At that point, I had very little savings and literally no retirement account. My friends who got a useful bachelor's degree and got a job out of college had almost a decade of a head start on me, and again, I finished my Ph.D. quickly and got (as you can see) extremely lucky to get a decent job. I'm sure the people around my age who weren't as lucky would be telling you the same thing even more forcefully and with a lot more pain behind it.

If you gave me the choice to stay with what I have or do it over again, I would have no hesitation about going back in time and doing something else with my life instead of getting a Ph.D. It's probably the worst decision I've ever made, and I say this as a dumb person who has spent over 30 years mostly making bad decisions. I basically just got a Ph.D. because I was good at school and wanted to do more school instead of entering the scary real world. I guess that makes me sound like a cynic, but frankly I'm not really into the whole "personal growth/fulfillment" angle of getting a Ph.D. because no amount of fulfillment will put food on the table, and at the end of the day, that's what your career/educational decisions come down to. All the intellectual fulfillment in the world won't mean anything if you're in Adjunct Hell scraping to stay above the poverty line.

So, yeah. Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to be mean, but you aren't special. There are literally thousands of history majors out there whose family/friends/professors have told them they're great history students and would make great professors, and every year, only a handful of the people who follow through on that advice actually become professors. I was told those same things once upon a time (except my applied linguistics professor, God bless her, who told me not to do it because there are no jobs, and mind you this was in 2011). Everyone here was told those things one upon a time. It doesn't matter. The odds are massively stacked against you, and the potential benefits of getting a Ph.D. are massively outweighed by the potential detriments. Getting a Ph.D. in history in 2022 is, to put it bluntly, career suicide. I'm sorry if this wasn't as gentle as it you were looking for, but it's the honest advice you (and anyone else considering a Ph.D. in history) need to hear.

In conclusion, DO NOT GET A PH.D. IN HISTORY.

Hi OP! I just graduated with an MA in history, which I would suggest as a good option to consider. If you're going for a standalone MA (meaning that it's not combined with an info sciences or law program) or if you go for a PhD, I would recommend having some job experience in the field you want to go into first before starting the program. That way you can know with more certainty what you want. I would also highly suggest taking a break of some kind after college before grad school. Grad school, even when it's exciting, is hard and can really wear on your self-confidence.

Unfortunately, most standalone history MAs in the US do not provide support for job training and navigating afterward can be difficult. This is actually something my PhD student friends and professors are often discussing, about how little actual career development most students receive. The current system is built for a much different time. Having a plan and some savings beforehand will help a lot! Best of luck!

I was in your shoes at the same point in my academic career. I did a masters and then decided to cut my losses. Got a 1 year professional degree after a year of underemployment and have had an interesting and reasonably well remunerated non academic career since. I can still learn about history in my free time and the research and writing skills I developed studying history are useful every day.

I feel your pain. Maybe I'm even more discouraged (feeling close to complete hopelessness), because my problem it's not only the future as a scholar, but also the (im)possibility of become a proper scholar, by getting a PhD.

I'm applying to PhDs in History, Death Studies and Religious Studies since 2020, getting rejected every time - in my country, because of the "underground" topic of my proposal (whose dissonance with mainstream themes such as Gender & Women Studies is surely a flaw); in international programmes, because of the extremely expensive tuitions fees.

Just to say... you're not alone. Good luck! 🍀

Others have given some great advice. I will start with the advice that multiple of my professors that I was close with in college gave me - graduate school isn't going anywhere. It'll always be there if you want it.

Now. To the meat of the answer. Loving to learn and write is a good start! Do you like to do research? Have you done an honors thesis at your uni? Those are questions which can help you really know if it's the right path for you.

Also if you aren't quite ready, financially, mentally, academically, whatever the case may be, I'd strongly recommend looking into teaching history at the high school level, especially teaching internationally (if you're in the US). I say internationally because in general, international schools are high level and cater to well... honestly, privileged kids. Kids of means. This means that those kids will be pursuing IB and AP coursework and it gives you a chance to teach higher level classes that aren't college level, but that do require you to figure out how to teach to a high level with kids who want it but might have some struggles at times (or, kids who are so good that they push you to be even better as a teacher).

Also honestly teaching at any high school will improve your pedagogy and sharpen your explanatory abilities.

Fundamentally though, the thing about teaching internationally is - it pays well. Really well, depending where you go. If you do it right, you could teach internationally for 5-6 years, build up a good little egg from which to support yourself while you pursue your PhD, because - money is one of the BIG things about getting a PhD in history that is an issue. Unless you're pursuing it at one of the premier schools (in the US, think Yale, Harvard, Princeton, a handful of others), funding might be tight. Or even nonexistent at some schools. Which means your doctoral degree is going to be expensive, to the point one of my professors told me straight up, it's possible you'll never pay off the loans you take out for it.

Last, aside from what others have said - consider, what area of history do you want to focus on for this? Research the work of professors in the focus area. Ask your professors about their network of people and who they might be able to hook you up with. Because more than funding even, perhaps, the advisor you work with and the department you're working within for a PhD, is incredibly, incredibly important. If you want to study a specific topic but the advisor and you don't get along, it's going to be much harder.

I’ll add only one thing. I’m a k-12 teacher and it’s important to remember that teaching high school requires a teaching credential. Each state has different requirements, but a credential program is usually a 1-year program (with 0 funding). Just keep this in mind if teaching high school is your “back up” plan.

There’s a middle ground between overthinking it and psyching yourself out, and on the other hand being naive and thinking you’ll automatically land a great job and have a great career.

There is a bit of a self-screening mechanism that can help you: if you manage to get into a top program, you will get a decent scholarship / stipend that pays your way, and you will have a better chance at getting a job when you’re done. Even while in the program, you’ll start getting a better sense of where you stand and what your chances are. (Meaning you can quit or just opt for a master’s if you think you’re not going to make the cut.) On the other hand, if you cannot get into a highly rated program, you may want to reconsider your options, as this could indicate that you’re not competitive.

My second thought is this: academia does have its trends. I have doctorates in history and religion (yes, two—I’m crazy). After 9/11 there was suddenly a huge call for people with PhDs related to Islam. If you could teach some kind of Intro to Islam course or whatever, your chances of landing a job was high. That was 20 years ago of course. But being aware of what areas universities are interested in can help. This is mainly important when deciding what to do your PhD research on. Don’t pick some topic of great interest to you but not to anyone else. A friend of mine got his PhD in inter-religious dialogue and peace studies, without specializing in any one religious tradition, and this is near-suicide for getting a job in religion (where everything is oriented around which religion(s) you study).

If you are really passionate about it, and if you’re a good scholar, you should give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, you will have time to change tracks.

I'd recommend that you try to learn everything that you can about how you actually do get a PhD and how the field of work looks like. Once you feel that you have a good understanding of how everything works you can create a plan for yourself on how to get there. Then you can decide for yourself whether it's worth it or not.

I'm sorry that I don't have anything better to say.

If you love studying history and teaching about it, then do it. It's incredibly difficult to land a full time job in a university, but its quite possible. I believe roughly 50 percent of PhDs end up at teaching at universities/colleges full time, eventually. But it usually entails underemployment for years. You have to sacrifice a lot for a PhD. You will see lots of friends and acquaintances becoming established in their careers, buying homes, going on vacations, etc, while you are still slogging away making less than minimum wage and just making ends meet. Only at the end of it all to be saddled in debt with not a lot of options for employment within your chosen field.

Increasingly, universities and colleges are become less relevant in 21st century society. Higher tuition and opportunity costs within higher education are turning more and more young people away. Universities/colleges are in a period where they are bleeding student enrollment, so expect even less full time jobs when you complete your PhD in five to eight years. More and more small schools are closing their doors permanently each year. While most surviving universities/colleges prefer hiring more poorly-paid and overworked contingent, adjunct faculty to minimize costs.

I'm an undergrad at a top history university in the country and having the exact same conundrum as you. I've talked to a lot of students and professors here and a popular 'compromise' route is actually doing a JD combined program where you basically add 2 years for a JD, but it provides you with an 'insurance policy' should you decide that you want a more financially stable career, and it also opens you up to teaching some combination of law and history which pays more, is more employable, and has a larger market now with things like law schools being on the rise.

I'd be happy to discuss more if you are interested. PM me and I can pass on more of the information I got.

You’re getting some great advice here, and I’ll second everyone else saying that it’s ok to take calculated risks - and your motivation and passion should be part of the calculation.

Just to add another data point though, I love history and have a history BA. I wasn’t 100% sold on working as a historian though, so I double-majored in communications, specifically journalism.

Journalism is it’s own can of worms, but having a media and communications qualification alongside the history has been amazingly useful and flexible. A LOT of historian skills, like verifying sources, storytelling, thinking critically about neat ‘narratives’, etc, transfer more or less one-to-one to journalism, in my view. Plus, I think it really improved the clarity and quality of my writing! A lot of historians are not trained well to write, imo.

I’ve worked for academic publications, online magazines, university outlets, and now I guess I’m a ‘science communicator’? I have NO SCIENCE TRAINING but I’m good at assimilating and communicating technical info.

TLDR: If you can add any kind of communications minor/diploma/certification into the mix, you’ll wildly expand your options here.

How depressing a read through this has been 😞 Such a contrast to how this sub is normally...

My heart breaks that so many of you are passionate about what you do but feel the need to discourage others from following that passion due to the toxicity injected because of money and politics.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if instead everyone got a UBI so they could be free to follow their passions without having those passions spoiled by the necessity for them to also have to support you 🤔

I got my PhD 25 years ago - so not an apples to apples comparison - but it was under similar conditions. If you do go for your doctorate, it has to be with the awareness that you may never get a job in academia. I heard one that there are nine doctorates granted every year for every tenure-track opening; I don’t know if this is strictly accurate but the odds are definitely stacked against you. And, in fact, I ended up outside academia, but I’ve never regretted the decision to continue my graduate studies. Those were some of the best years of my life and I’ve drawn on what I learned there more times than I can count.

Bottom line: do what you love. If you love history, and studying it makes you happy, do that thing. If, though, the primary reason you want a PhD is so you can teach at the college level, maybe work on a backup plan.