Hi all! I’m a graduate student in history at a middling state school (I have a good record, but attended here because they gave me great funding/personal reasons). The title is something my adviser said to me after asking if I’d considered going for my phd. I had not, because I have no desire to go into academia and think it’s generally a dumb idea with the jobs being what they are. However, he told me that if I was serious about working in the field, I’d need a PhD to be competitive (and he NEVER tells people to get a phd—in class he always discourages it, so it’s not like he’s out of touch with the state of things). I want to go into public history, ideally government, and I’ve got an MLIS with a specialization in digital curation. I’m afraid that adding a phd will make me unemployable and be an overall bad decision, based on all the warnings I’ve seen on this and other subs regarding history phds. however, that’s all about the state of academic jobs—since I’m not interested in that, I’m wondering if I should go after a phd, if I can get into a good school. Anyway, what I’m ultimately wondering from any practicing historians is: will not having a phd put me at a disadvantage when it comes to government/non-academic history jobs? Thanks for any insight!
It wouldn't put you at a disadvantage necessarily, but I'm not sure how necessary it is depending on what your career goals are. If you have the specialized training for a library science/archivist job, those generally don't require a Ph.D. I don't think having a Ph.D. would hurt your chances of getting those jobs, but since they generally only require an MLIS or equivalent I'm not sure much it would help, and considering what an enormous (bad) investment getting a Ph.D. is, I think it would quickly become a case of diminishing returns.
It may be different for more specialized stuff relating to historical preservation and curation, but it doesn't sound like that's really what you're interested in. You can probably get better career-specific feedback from people who are actually working in that field (I work at a museum, but I'm a researcher and my job required a Ph.D.). I'm mainly here to deliver the obligatory "don't get a Ph.D. in history" comment, because you shouldn't get a Ph.D. in history, but fortunately you seem to already know that.
My advice is to look at the job listings for the types of jobs you're interested in and see what they require in terms of education and training, since they'll generally list that up front.