Let’s cut the romanticism and get straight to the point: getting a PhD in history is not just a bad idea—it’s the academic equivalent of jumping out of a plane and discovering halfway down that your parachute is actually a book on the historiography of 13th-century Burgundy.
The Seduction of the History PhD
You love history. Not in a casual, Netflix-documentary way. You’re the person who reads footnotes for fun, who corrects movie timelines during the credits, who believes historians are the keepers of truth. You’ve had professors tell you that you have “the gift,” friends marvel at your obscure knowledge, and maybe even a mentor who said, “You’re exactly what academia needs.”
So, you think, “Why not make this my life? I’ll teach. I don’t need an Ivy League job. I’d be happy at a small liberal arts college, sharing my passion with young minds.”
But here’s the thing: there are no jobs.
The Brutal Reality
The academic job market for history has been a dystopian wasteland since 2008. It made a small recovery in 2011, then collapsed like an empire built on sand. Every year, roughly 1,200 new history PhDs hit the market for fewer than 300 tenure-track jobs. And that’s just the beginning of the funnel.
- You’re not only competing with your peers. You’re up against people who graduated five years ago, people with more publications, more teaching experience, and more connections.
- Your specific subfield? No one cares. The market doesn’t want your niche expertise in 17th-century Scottish clan warfare or whatever obscure topic you’ve spent your life perfecting.
- Thinking about museum work? That’s even more competitive, and you won’t have the required skills or experience.
And adjunct positions? Forget it. They’re not “foot in the door” jobs anymore. They’re exploitative contracts that pay below minimum wage and offer no benefits or job security.
A PhD Won’t Make You “More Marketable”
Corporate America doesn’t care about your ability to analyze primary sources or your nuanced understanding of causality. They want hard skills and direct experience—neither of which a PhD provides.
Instead of being an asset, your degree becomes a liability:
- Overqualified for entry-level jobs.
- Underqualified for anything that requires specific training.
- Seen as a flight risk or as someone whose salary requirements will be too high.
The Hidden Costs
Let’s talk about the things no one tells you:
- Mental health: Half of PhD students struggle with depression and anxiety (and the other half lie about it). Academia is a breeding ground for imposter syndrome and burnout.
- Financial instability: Whether you’re on a stipend or funding yourself, you’re losing critical years of income, retirement savings, and job experience.
- Social isolation: While your peers are buying homes, building careers, and having kids, you’re in a basement archive, arguing with a librarian over access to microfilm.
And for women, people of color, or anyone outside the “traditional” mold of academia, the system is even more brutal. Sexual harassment, systemic biases, and uneven emotional labor expectations compound an already broken system.
The Jobs Aren’t Coming Back
Here’s the kicker: even if you survive all of that, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. History enrollments are plummeting. Universities are cutting tenure lines and hiring fewer adjuncts. Retiring professors aren’t being replaced, and older faculty with tenure aren’t going anywhere.
The pipeline is clogged. And the institutions supposedly built to support you? They’re failing, too. Promised funding disappears. Dissertation deadlines get moved to push students out. The entire system is designed to chew you up and spit you out.
The Hard Truth
You’re not the exception. Your passion, your talent, your work ethic—they don’t change the math. The humanities PhD is a vocational degree for a career that no longer exists.
So unless you’re independently wealthy, enjoy suffering, or have no other way to express your love for history, do not get a PhD in history. Write a blog. Teach a class at the local library. Hell, start a TikTok channel about obscure historical events. But don’t spend a decade destroying your future for a system that doesn’t care about you.
The past may be worth studying, but don’t let it ruin your future.
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