Examining Career Opportunities for the Humanities Ph.D.
While America's universities are turning out a record number of Ph.D.'s, the job market in higher education has become increasingly competitive--especially for those with degrees in the humanities. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J., will assemble a group of experts October 22-24 to examine the job crisis in the humanities, and to obtain an overview of career alternatives.
The purpose of the convening "The Humanities Ph.D. and Careers Outside the Academy" is to explore concrete ways for ensuring the entire society, not just the academy, fully benefits from the talents of its most-educated humanists. The event will include the presentation of a survey of opportunities for employing Ph.D's outside the academy, as well as a case study of the humanities Ph.D. job situation by Maresi Nerad of the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Weisbuch, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship, says well- paying and intellectually fulfilling positions for humanities Ph.D.'s are emerging in business, industry and in various consulting fields. "[However], the lack of knowledge concerning non- academic opportunities makes for a terrible waste of human abilities, rendering our most educated citizens a huge lost resource," he says. "Through this convening, we want to gain perspective on where and what these career options are, and to establish momentum for the future."
Weisbuch notes that he sees the convening as the first step in adding long-term clout to the humanities Ph.D. "We are not merely after providing jobs for worthy people," he says. "We mean to change the economic status of the humanities within academia by providing strong career opportunities outside of it." Weisbuch and his Foundation colleagues see part of the problem rooted in the disparity between resources earmarked for the humanities and the sciences:
"Our nation at present provides hardy funding for the sciences, little and less and less for the humanities. We afford billions for the health of the nation's body and offer chump change for its soul. Within academia, salaries and research funding in the humanities are decisively--and increasingly--lower than in other disciplines. None of this will change until robust career opportunities exist beyond academia for humanities experts as they do for students and professors of law or physics or engineering or psychology."
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is dedicated to the encouragement of excellence in education through the identification of critical needs and the development of effective programs to address them. They include: offering scholarships for undergraduate study and fellowships for graduate study; encouraging greater cooperation between the academy and other sectors of society; supporting programs to improve the status and representation of minority groups and women at all levels of education; and maintaining the vitality of teachers through professional development.
Background information, including a list of participants, is enclosed. If you or a colleague would like to attend the convening, or if you would like to find out more about the findings presented during the event, contact Liz Duffy, director of program development, 609- 452-7007, or by e-mail: [email protected].
The Foundation's Web site can be located at: http://www.woodrow.org.
RSS