Did I Waste My Time Getting My Degree?

So it has nearly been a year since I finished undergrad with a BA in history. I have yet to find a full time job despite my best efforts. Its not like I just coasted through school either, I had very good grades, was part of the honor society, was part of about fifteen student groups, took every opportunity I could get, and got a prestigious internship that is more exclusive than Harvard and it seems like no one will even look at my resume. My plan is to get a Ph.D in history and be a college professor but I have since found out the job market for history Ph.Ds is horrible, and only getting worse. I'm pretty good at what I do, the very generous offers from several graduate schools is testament to that, but I also don't want to spend $100,000 dollars to be unemployable. But I'm simply not qualified for anything else so I don't know what to do.

Follow your dream, you will regret else

You need a plan B.

Assuming the number of university professors stays constant, a professor only needs one of her/his students to be her/his successor.

Think about all the students that graduate/get a PhD. A professor may be the promoter of 10-20 PhD students throughout her/his career. Only one is needed as the replacement. The other 9-19 have to get some other job.

Whatever your plan B will be, you have to decide. In a sense it is indeed true that you having a PhD in history or some random BSc in any subject, for many jobs will be just as valuable.

I am in a technical field, and even there people worry about the disadvantages of getting a PhD. For many jobs, there is a disadvantage to having a PhD mindset, even when the job market is good.

I would look into management/clerk jobs in industry/business. You can't learn most the stuff you need for that in school, and employers know that. They just need the right type of person. And your degree will show them you have the tenacity to complete a degree.

If you are not the 'right type of person' and your degree is bad, you don't have the right connections and you aren't at the right place at the right time, it may be very difficult. That's why I think it is dangerous to just tell people to 'follow their dreams or else you'll regret it'. Nothing sucks more than being really skilled, passionate and educated, but not having the opportunity to use what you learned. You can have regrets either way.
In fact, there are people who played it safe, have a boring job in a safe industry, and they have regrets. They may have had even more regrets if they had to go through life as an unemployed academic.

If you want to go for a PhD in history, I think you have to make sure you are above average. You must be willing to move to another country every two years for the next 10-20 years, and crazy stuff like that. Most people that become academics now will never get a permanent position, ever, as institutions are moving away from permanent contracts even for top researchers.

Thank you for your replies.

Everything you said is correct Talthybius. That's why I am concerned. When I went into college I didn't have a plan B because I didn't know I'd have to take a year off between undergrad and grad school. Later on I assumed I'd be able to get some job because the department hammered the notion that we can do anything with this degree into our heads. Since my recent wake up call I have been trying to learn a programming language, hoping that some useful STEM related skill could help me if I couldn't get a full time position as a history professor. And unfortunately in my case, a full time position with benefits is necessary. I have a chronic illness and the only medication that helps costs thousands of dollars per dose without insurance, so being stuck as an adjunct my entire life simply isn't an option.

I majored in design but in my sophomore year I started looking and where I could realistically get jobs, and if you didn't know someone in the business it was likely you could end up at Sherwin Williams. but I was very good at design but the only one in my family to be in art and art is a tricky business. So I switched to a double in psychology/sociology....sure I found jobs, low paying and soul sucking.

Do try or like man of constant sorrow said...you will always regret it.

I am in a physics programme and people in my degree are anxious. It is natural to be in a very academic field.

Talking with my study advisor (and maybe more importantly, ignoring student debt), I realized you shouldn't worry more than is reasonable. That creates anxiety that isn't going to help anyone. An academic career is a bit like a lottery. And if you don't win, you'll know soon enough and you can transition out (if you are young enough and if you don't have health issues, like you or me). And with a degree you are better off than without any degree of any kind.

And if the completely economy is moving towards a state where almost no one has a permanent job/position, there is no more reason to avoid academics for that reason.

I doubt I could truly help you, but wanted to place my input...perhaps you are limiting yourself to teaching in a classroom and not looking at the big picture. There is a scientific aspect as well as an artistic aspect to history degrees. Look at places like the Smithsonian or well-known museums. You can travel around the world studying history and displaying your knowledge of history, you can teach others about history without stepping foot into a classroom. Is there a particular moment in history that amazes you? Maybe you are thinking "I am a history major because I want to be a teacher" when really, you should be thinking, "well, maybe the Civil War is the most amazing thing in the world to me, I can teach others about the Civil War doing this, this, this" ---without even stepping foot into a classroom. Have you ever wondered what those historians you see in documentaries are really doing behind the scenes? Sure, no doubt a lot of those are teachers and professors, but many historians do other work that may be even more rewarding than teaching.

https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-...history-majors

I think this would be a good place to get some ideas for brainstorming.

I wanted to reply to this post directly.

It's hard out there for everyone. That's the sad thing about it. I'm in STEM and have computer programming experience and education, and I can say it's just as tough. If I were you, I'd skip learning the STEM and focus on how to build up the various aspects of your skills. What kind of skills did you learn from the internships? What is valuable about them that would make you a good employee for a professional office job?

I have education in economics, but all my life I do art - the drawing. I think everything was all good for me. But not for my career. But we can not have a society and a world in which all people are known and popular and get superprofits. The completely economy is moving towards a state where almost no one has a permanent job / position, there is no more reason to avoid academics for that reason.

There is also a case to make for not getting a degree in arts so you can be a free soul.

Once you get a degree in arts, you have to produce what makes you money. Almost no one gets to make money making exactly that what they love. And an arts degree doesn't make you any more competent or not having one any less competent than what your art shows you are capable of. The only real reason to get one is to network or to get a job as a arts teacher.

If you develop your arts independent of your professional career, you have the luxurity to make whatever art you feel like making. And if you have a good job for a while, you have money to spend on your art or the freedom to make art without income inbetween hopping from job to job.

Making art your soul isn't quite into drains you of creative energy, which takes away of the art you really want to make.

Are you talking about a Bachelor of Arts degree, or artistic professions in general? I ask because some schools categorize B.A. degrees differently. At my alma mater, physiology, some computer science offshoots, and economics are B.A. degrees. I think a lot of B.A. degrees require students to go to grad school in order to make good money, whereas B.S. degrees don't.

A career in arts of course. None of this applies to someone with a B.A. in economics or computer science, obviously.

It is not really clear to me how an arts degree helps you be a professional artist.

This guy explains it well:

In 1970 I changed my major from history to sociology, just before my senior year (with only one sociology course to my credit -- I graduated with more history credits, my new minor, than sociology). Around 2001 I was thinking about what I would regret when I was really old and wondered about where my love of history went so went back and got a second degree, in history (2007) and then went on and got a degree from Oxford just a year ago, so I can appreciate how hard you have worked. I too was in my history groups/clubs and had a 4.0 GPA, the whole nine yards of participation.

Were I you, now, I would take my year off and jump through the hoops to become a certified genealogist: http://www.bcgcertification.org/ I don't know what field of history you were interested in and if social history is a good fit for you but I find it very satisfying. There are many magazines to write for and zillions of groups and lecture opportunities and it would give you a focus for your further academic work toward a PhD and professorship.

Good online program to get you started: Genealogical Research Program Classroom and Online | Center for Professional Education | Boston University

Education never goes waste. I think you should follow your passion. You will definitely succeed.

Why would you spend any money on obtaining a PhD? If you were given generous offers, then the PhD programs should be fully funded. The stipends are not large, but they do cover full tuition plus around $20k/year for living expenses. I'm not in history, but I'm a professor in another humanities field and what I generally tell my students is that a PhD is worth if it is something you love, you cant imagine doing anything else, and you do not go into debt for it. If you're not passionate about the discipline or teaching, that's another story though. In my program, we have about a 50% placement rate for new PhDs-- so there is a risk that you may not find an academic once you are finished. There is a similar risk in other fields too though.

Remember that academia is all very well but there is whole world outside those ivory towers. If you are not fully whole hog on the process consider that in the UK at least plumbers and electricians earn much more than most graduates, work when they like and live where they like. Many I know have a yacht in Newquay or a villa in Algarve or spend their holidays digging wells in Malawi. There is a case for learning a trade and you will be set up for life. I rather suspect that Artificial Intelligence will do away with most white collar jobs by the time most young people will be developing their careers but we will always need plumbers and sparkies.

You can always do a part-time degree or higher degree later.

The lower your education, the more you are at risk of becoming unemployed through AI. Of course, the service industry hasn't been hit yet as much as other industries where a lot is already automated.

Don't agree you need to become a plumber or technician to have job safety. At some point you need an electrical engineering degree to be trained as a electrician eventhough you don't need all that knowledge to learn that profession.

It's true though that when you switch from academia to industry, you have to be able to adapt to the different attitudes and dynamics. In industry, the business needs to be kept rolling; you need to do something inside a certain framework of time and costs. In academia, you have to solve a problem as thoroughly as possible.

As for scorpiosis37's comment. I agree. If you are a good history student, you should be able to get a paid PhD track somewhere in Europe.

T-Price, my advice would be to get a job while completing your college. I've always loved education, have two degrees (Computer Science and Finance, rec'd 15 yrs apart). I had to get a full time job (was in loan dept of a bank) after my first yr and completed college at night. I honed some awesome skills working while attending college that would spread across industries. (didn't hurt that the bank paid my books and tuition up front!) I took every class that interested me after I earned my first degree. Since I dealt in mortgage loans, I took real estate classes and got my realtor's license, for instance, something else to fall back on. I purchased a used car at an automobile recycler and they offered me double my bank salary (and they paid 100% of health insurance premiums, along with the same deal to pay my books and tuition up front). It was the late 80s when every small business was becoming computerized. That job lead to a competitor where I started making the big bucks with all sorts of perks, co. car, gas card, etc. (I became general manager there) I took Environmental Geology while employed there b/c that industry is highly regulated by the EPA. I was surprised at how much I liked the environmental aspect. So parlayed that into a career in environmental consulting, very rewarding. I eventually left for an executive directorship of a non-profit trade association, where I did all the legislative monitoring and lobbying. The association had small pockets, but I went up against the Automobile Manufacturer's Assn. (Ford, Chrysler, GM, Toyota, etc.) and won. (It didn't hurt that I was on the board of directors of our state EPA). Testifying in Senate and House committee meetings, my words beat out the deep pockets. But alas, I was so disillusioned by how gov't actually works, so I earned my Finance degree during that job (on student loans). Next, I went to work for a large brokerage firm. See how things can fall into others? Strange road, but it was what I had to work with.

That being said, my husband of 40 yrs never finished high school, owns his own service business, and earns more than my college educated self.

Best of luck, hope I presented another point of view. And I'm sorry I got carried away with my story. I'll leave you with one of my favorite sayings: "Knowledge is the one thing you can give away and still keep."

If all else fails, you can get alternative certification to teach high school in most states. I enter grad school in Jan in Liberal Arts, so that is my plan B.