Medieval Ph.D. Registry Project

REGISTRY REPORT: 2002

Roger Dahood, Project Director
rdahood@u.arizona.edu

The Medieval Academy Ph.D. Registry Project was begun in 1997 to track the employment status of recipients, 1995 and later, of U.S. and Canadian Ph.D.s in medieval subject areas.¹ When it was conceived by CARA, the Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations, there was particular concern that a tight job market would lead to a dwindling production of Ph.D.s. It is now possible to generalize over a five-year period about the number of medieval doctorates awarded and about tenure-track employment for those earning the Ph.D.s in the two most populous fields of medieval studies, English and history.

As the data in Table 1 show, the total number of Ph.D.s granted in these two fields from 1995 to 1999 averaged 131. Of those receiving their doctorates during this period, an average of 38.9% took tenure-track (TT) positions. The employment success is even stronger if figures are used for the four years from 1995 to 1998, when 41.1% were hired in tenure-track positions. This higher rate can be attributed mainly  to a reporting lag of at least a year in published data sources regarding the number of placements and in a number of cases to a lag between degree year and securing of TT status.² If the pattern for the years 1995 to 1998 holds, the number of tenure-track positions secured by 1999 doctoral recipients in English and history will increase. The 1999 figures appear here for the first time.

The Registry was begun because empirical data about the job market were lacking. This project has aimed to help define the magnitude of the employment problem and provide an empirical basis for discussion, which has in the past relied largely upon anecdotal evidence. Although one wishes that the five-year data reflected an even stronger job market, it is the case that Ph.D.s in English and history are securing tenure-track positions at a higher rate than suggested by the excessively negative reports that  circulated among medievalists for several years and that led CARA to begin the project. 

One result of these more positive data is that the CARA Executive Committee, during its recent meeting at Pennsylvania State University, decided to put the project on hold, although it may begin surveying tenure-track positions again in the future.

As Table 2 suggests, the figures for medievalists in English compare favorably with the figures from the Modern Language Association’s biennial survey of TT placements in English and American literature in 1996–1997, the only years so far in which the Registry and published MLA data overlap. The MLA results, based on a response rate of not less than 95% of Ph.D.-granting departments, show that of people earning Ph.D.s in all periods of English and American literature (MLA does not break out figures by historical period) between 1 September 1996 and 31 August 1997, 35% secured TT employment.³

No comparable figures are available for history, since the figures published by the American Historical Association do not break out the number of TT positions.⁴ As Table 3 suggests, however, TT placements for medievalists in history roughly approximated those for medievalists in English.

The figures included in Tables 2 and 3 for 1995–1998 have been adjusted from those given in previous reports. The adjusted figures reveal sharp increases in the number of Ph.D.s who hold or have held TT positions due to the “lag factors” already mentioned.  Also, as more information about faculty has become available on institutional Websites, I have been able to confirm TT status in a few previously doubtful cases.

In Tables 2 and 3, the left-hand columns identify the cohort by the year the Ph.D. was conferred.⁵ The second column gives the number from the cohort presumed to have been on the job market.⁶ The third column gives the number from the cohort presumed to have secured TT posts. Figures separated by a slash (/) indicate totals excluding/including indefinitely renewable or continuing non-TT instructional positions (chiefly at institutions that do not grant tenure). The fourth column expresses the number in column three as a percentage of the number in column two. The last three columns show the number of TT Ph.D.s by gender (U = gender unknown). Previously reported figures appear in parentheses.⁷

The current figures are only approximate and are subject to a number of caveats. 1) The number of earned Ph.D.s may be higher than reported. There tends to be, for example, an interval, sometimes of several years, between the degree date and notice in Dissertation Abstracts International, especially in the case of Canadian Ph.D.s. The cohort for any year may therefore be somewhat larger than the tables above indicate. 2) In most cases the Ph.D.s themselves or other reliable sources, such as dissertation supervisors, have supplied confirmation of TT status. For a small number of Ph.D.s counted as TT, I have no explicit confirmation, but I have found the information available in published sources (including the Internet) to be consistent with an inference of TT status. I have excluded from the TT figures all employed Ph.D.s for whose status I have no explicit confirmation and to whom assignment of TT status seems for any reason doubtful. The tables may thus slightly underreport TT numbers. 3) A small number of Ph.D.s in the 1995–1999 cohorts have held successive TT positions, and a small number have moved from TT to non–TT positions. The tables report the number of 1995–1999 Ph.D.s who have ever held TT positions. The tables count only once a Ph.D. who has held successive TT positions and count as TT those Ph.D.s formerly but no longer occupying TT positions.

Tables 2 and 3 also show that among 1995–1999 Ph.D.s in both English and history the total number of women exceeded the total number of men hired to TT positions (English, 84 F vs. 55 M; history, 59 F vs. 56 M, and 1 U). In the English cohorts throughout the five years covered, the number of TT women has been greater than the number of TT men. In the history cohorts through 1998, TT hiring favored men slightly. In 1999 the balance in history shifted decidedly, when more than twice as many women as men secured TT positions.

TT openings typically fluctuate from year to year in response to unpredictable short-term market factors, and it would be risky in any circumstances to extrapolate placement trends from only five years of Registry data. The risk of inaccurate projection is magnified, however, in using figures from 1995–1999, when the national economy was strong and growing at a high rate. How or to what extent the current weaker economy will manifest itself in the academic job market is not yet clear. Even if we allow for the large number of senior faculty approaching retirement age, pressure on state budgets may translate into fewer funded openings at public universities in the near term. It would be rash to assume that the demand for new Ph.D.s in English and history will rise significantly from 1995–1999 levels any time soon. Robert B. Townsend, however, reporting for the American Historical Association, may be right to believe it likely that because of approaching retirements history placements will remain for the next few years at their recent elevated level.⁸

As noted earlier, when the Registry was conceived, a particular concern was the possibility that a tight job market would lead to dwindling production of Ph.D.s. The Registry data suggest that in 1995–1999, despite prolonged intense competition in the job market, the allure of Ph.D. programs in medieval English and history remained strong. A question for the future is whether the profession will continue to attract in large numbers the brightest and most capable young scholars.

Notes

1. A detailed description of the Registry Project and the fields surveyed appears in Medieval Academy News, no. 134 (September 1999), pp. 3–5, and additional information appears in no. 141 (November 2001), p. 8, n. 2. An interim report was also published in no. 138 (November 2000), pp. 4–5. Previous reports are available on the Academy’s Website, http://www.MedievalAcademy.org, via the “Features” link. My special thanks go to Richard Emmerson, who is responsible for Table 1 and for editorial changes that sharpened the focus of the present report.

2. The lag is not unique to medievalists. Robert B. Townsend, Assistant Director for Publications, Information Systems, and Research at the American Historical Association, has commented in private conversation that in any particular cohort of history Ph.D.s the number obtaining TT positions has recently tended to rise for a few years after the degree year.

3. “Data on the Job Market: Findings from the MLA Surveys of Ph.D. Placement, 1977 to 1997,” http://www.mla.org/careerinfo.htm#data: “Response rates have consistently ranged from 95% to 100%. Thus the studies account for virtually all doctorate recipients rather than just providing a representative sample.” A bar graph covering 1976­–1996 may be found at http://www.ade.org/images/PHDplace.jpg. The Registry and MLA data overlap but are not wholly congruent in part because the Registry reports on Ph.D.s earned in the twelve months January–December, whereas the MLA reports the twelve months September–August, and in part because the main source of the Registry figures for numbers of Ph.D.s granted is DAI and for numbers with TT status is responses from individual Ph.Ds, whereas the source of the MLA figures is the PhD.‑granting departments.

4. The American Historical Association publishes data on full‑time academic positions, a category that includes both TT and non‑TT positions, but does not break out the number of TT positions; Robert B. Townsend, “Job Market Report 2001: Openings Booming . . . but for How Long?” Perspectives Online, reprinted from the News column of the December 2001 Perspectives, http://www.theaha.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0112/0112new1.cfm. 

5. The dates are as reported in Dissertation Abstracts International. It has come to my attention that in some cases the year reported in DAI differs by a year from the year on record at the granting institution. For the sake of consistency in my reporting I have used the dates in DAI. For tracking employment patterns over many years the discrepancies should prove statistically unimportant.

6. The number excludes Ph.D.s known to me to have remained in or resumed positions they occupied prior to 1995 or known to me to have had no plans to seek TT employment (for example, retirees). Possibly more Ph.D.s than I am currently aware of fall into one or the other excluded category. If so, the success rate would be higher than reported here.

7. The earlier figures appeared in Medieval Academy News, no. 141 (November 2001), p. 8.

8. “Despite the problems of placement, the current elevated number of job openings appears likely to continue through the end of the decade. We currently estimate that about 21 percent of the full‑time history faculty are in their late 50s and early 60s, and approaching retirement. As a result, the number of job openings seems likely to remain at its present elevated rate, as history faculty who entered the academy in the late 1960s and early 1970s leave their posts” (Townsend, “Job Market Report”). See also, by the same author, “Odds for Applicants Improving, according to Survey of Job Advertisers,” Perspectives Online, reprinted from the News column of the January 2001 Perspectives, http://www.theaha.org/perspectives/issues/2001/0101/0101new3.cfm#1.