Career Exploration is a Humanities Research Project

Many students come to their career advising appointments with just one question: What do Ph.D. (or master’s) students who earned a degree in my field go on to do professionally if they don’t become a professor? For humanities students in particular, this question cuts to the core of anxieties about the ways in which both the fragility of the academic humanities and perceptions about the impracticality of humanities degrees will affect their own career prospects.

But, putting anxieties aside, this question really is just a research question that can serve as the starting point for productive career exploration using methods that humanities students have mastered in graduate school.

Just as you cannot complete a research project in the humanities without reading what other scholars have written about your topic, it is also important to read a variety of sources about humanities Ph.D. career pathways to understand the landscape. These sources range from studies conducted by higher education organizations like the Council of Graduate Schools and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (specifically its Humanities Indicators project); to research and analysis coming out of scholarly societies like the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association; to the many books, articles and blog posts on the topic.