My son is a sophomore at a Big Ten school. He is currently a pre-Optometry major. I’m thinking, “cool… he’ll make a good living, and he’ll be able to afford to put me in a nice retirement home when I’m old and senile… he’ll have considerable freedom to come around and wipe the drool off my chin.” Well, he’s struggling with a couple of the science classes and over the Thanksgiving weekend he tells me he’s going to change his major.
My first thought is “OK… not a problem. Heck, most people change their major at least once.” Then he drops the bomb. He is considering changing to History, with a goal of becoming a college professor.
I’m stunned. He inherited my love of history, but I didn’t expect this.
I was thinking something along the lines of “are you NUTS!!!.. the competition is fierce, the academic politics are disgusting, and the pay is modest at best… you want to give up a promising career to stand in front of a huge auditorium boring the bejesus out of stoned undergrads?.. you want to fight for tenure by seeing how many bad scholarly articles you can get published in obscure journals?” But, playing the part of the supporting, calm, rational father, I actually said something like “OK… lets to a little research and see what we can learn.”
So I turn to you, the Teeming Millions, for more informed responses than my stereotypical ones.
a) for the profs out there… pros and cons?
b) are there actually jobs to be found?.. or do many college professor wanna-be’s end up teaching high school?
c) I assume you need an advanced degree to even be considered (I can do the Google research)… but are there any other qualifications that might be unstated but helpful?
(I did a search of the SDMB GQ and came up with this link here, but it doesn’t quite fit my question.)
Yes, a Ph.D. is an absolute must. Even the people teaching at very minor colleges need Ph.D.'s now. In a few fields you can teach part-time with just a master’s or even get a permanent job at some minor place, but history isn’t one of them.
I don’t know the field well enough to give you a percentage, but I’m sure some people get Ph.D.'s and don’t get teaching jobs. So perhaps your son will have to go to law school afterwards and will end up making more money than the people who do get teaching jobs. So what’s your point?
Are the job prospects in optometry really that good? Did your son ever really want to be an optometrist, or was he studying it just to please you? If he’s struggling with his science classes, that suggests that he isn’t that good at or interested in the field. Is it so important that you have someone to support you in retirement that you would insist that your son study something he doesn’t enjoy?
Nope… not done to please me. During high school and now during summers, he works at an Optometry office giving eye exams. It’s something he really likes to do.
I’d concur with your assessment that he probably isn’t that good at it… he did well in his science and math ACTs, but that hasn’t translated into the grades he expected. (and BTW, the retirement comments were intended to be humorous, I’m not worried about my retirement… but maybe I should be worried about my ability to make a joke? ~grin~)
It really doesn’t matter to me what he does, as long as he’s happy. I just want him to make an informed decision.
I started school as a physics major and have ended up as a classics major (you know, learning a “dead” language and a bunch of history as well).
I’d say that if your son has a definite goal in mind (ie, history prof), then he’s leaps and bounds ahead of many people. There are so many careers out there that pay reasonably well (depending I suppose on where you live) for which all you need is a degree of any kind, I wouldn’t be too concerned about your son starving and living out of the back of an '85 station wagon. Heck, I’m still in school (no degree yet), haven’t even done all that exceptionally and am making more than 20 thousand a year working 32 hrs a week at something that has no direct relation to any of the classes I’ve taken so far, and I’ve got a pension building, 401k, health insurance, and all that.
If he’s excited about history, then I’d say you’ve got no worries. He’s excited about something. He’s into it. So many people don’t really care at all about what it is they are learning, or don’t learn anything while they’re in school, that if he actually wants to be learning something, there are no problems.
I started college as a chemistry major, and now I am working on my PhD in ART history, with plans to be a prof (see, things could be worse!). I think choosing the academic life is a labor of love and a lifestyle choice based on things other than just money (among other things I am attracted to the stability of an institutional job, the challenge and reward of affecting slackjawed stoner undergraduate minds, working around intellegent colleagues, and the opportunity to be around young people, which in turn might keep me a bit more vibrant). The job market is tough, but most of the people I see graduating even in my field are getting jobs of some sort. And we are all waiting for the fabled boomer-professor retirement flood. . . More people are going to university than ever before, and there will be profs needed.
Thanks Eonwe… you display a maturity beyond your years. Good luck.
capybara, I didn’t think about the “boomer professor retirement flood”. Being a boomer myself it should’ve been obvious. And I agree with your desire to associate with young people… Mrs. algernon and I have both decided that if we move somewhere else upon retirement, it’ll have to be a college town for the very reason you suggest.
It sounds like neither of you have any regrets about changing from a science major to liberal arts… which reinforces that enjoying what you do is the critical decision factor.
I graduated with a degree in Classics and am now working as a computer technician. I make twice as much as a beginning public school teacher in my state. I know college profs make more than me, but I’ve been training in my field for only three years.
Who knows what he might do after he gets his degree?
I am making a decent living as a* historical researcher. I want to go for a PhD, but I simply haven’t the time or the money, and the experience I’m gaining and the reputation I’m making for myself seems to be paying a greater, more immediate reward. I’m hoping to be able to someday dodge the M.A. and go straight for the gold.
However, it is exasperating to have to hand over my research and analysis to a PhD so he can read it at $125 an hour and sign off on it as his own, “expert” opinion. Yes, the historians I know generally charge $125 an hour as a consulting fee, so there is a comfortable living to be made in that field outside of academia, if one can find the work.
There are lots of people who have used the history major as a springboard for bigger, better things, because it augments many other venues of study. I am the only person I know who has a lowly BA in History and a job in my chosen field.
*I’m an American, and therefore I pronounce the “H.”
Has he done any teaching? The writing department of my school sponsors an independent study student teaching program. One semester of that and I knew that I would hate being a teacher. If there’s nothing like that, perhaps he could be a TA? TA’s are usually grad students, but in some departments they don’t have enough grad students, so they’ll hire undergrads who’ve gotten an A in the class. He should really try teaching before he makes any decisions, it’s so much more exhausting and frustrating than it seems.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the “boomer retirement flood.” They were holding out that promise for us back in the early eighties. It ain’t gonna happen. Professors have retired. Their positions are either lost or replaced with with part-time or post-doc positions ($12,000 a year, anyone?) Tenured positions are only created when the candidate can bring funding with him or her and that only happens in the sciences, basically.
So, if he wants to go for it he should be prepared to go deeply into debt, work his ass off for little or nothing, and head into a job market already crammed with brilliant people scrabbling for the few desireable jobs.
An alternative is to get a Ph.D. in history, but with an eye toward using it in some other capacity than academics.
There is a lot of time for your son to undergo lots of changes with his career, so don’t worry too much.
Many large corporations hire professional historians. Some research company history (with so many mergers, the keepers of an older firm’s history could be laid or retire) or serve as staff archivist.
My friend with a graduate history degree in ancient Egypt ended up teaching ESL and developing curriculua for a large chain of schools. Now he is an executive with another educational institution.
A key qualification for anyone with a liberal arts background who desires to be employed in an organizational setting is an ability to effectively communicate with other people.
Ya never know, your son might rekindle his Optometric interest in the near future.
~grin~ … I caught this too and was going to respond, but I saw that you already saw it. If that truly were a perk of being a firm’s historian, I think I’d go through a career change myself!!!
Cher said it. That’s why I left after completing my coursework. The old farts may be retiring, but the budgets are shrinking, and the Liberal Arts are suffering the most because they don’t bring in outside dollars. Have your son look at the staffing of [pick a university]'s history department 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and now. Ask him if he wants to teach Frosh History at the local community college.
Now that this thread is about to fall off the list, I thought I’d take the time to thank all the posters (though most of you probably won’t see this) for your feedback and insights. I truly appreciate it. I’m disappointed I didn’t hear from any professors out there, but hey, I guess in order to do that I’d have to put the word “naked” in the OP. ~grin~
It seems it comes down to this…
a) it’ll all work out in the end,
b) so don’t worry,
c) even though professor jobs are apparently scarce.
bump!
I am changing my grad major to public history, which is history for those who don’t want to teach slacker freshmen or write boring articles just to keep the slacker-teaching job. There aren’t too many programs out there, but it’s another possibility for your history-loving son.
Everybody’s covered anything I might say, so like a true academic, I’ll just recycle it.
All of which is true, particularly if you take “working around” to mean the same as “getting around”–the longer I stay here, the more I dislike intellectuals. They’re not quite as smart as they think they are, and some are real pains. But on the upside, once you get tenure, you can ignore them.
Damn straight. But he may like it.
It boils down to: you have to like teaching and research, and all too often the students seem awfully lazy and/or ignorant, and the research pointless, even if it’s not rendered ridiculous by some awful trendy theory. To top it off, the administrators are always after us because we don’t have enough students. But they say a liberal arts degree is useful out there in the real world.
I got a B.A. in history and now I’m working as the education coordinator at a local history museum. I love my job. I get to do research, design exhibits, and lead educational programs for students and adults…a lot of variety, which keeps me from getting bored. I’m currently working towards an M.A. in public history, which is basically for historians who don’t want to wind up in the classroom. I have other friends who work as archivists, historic preservationists, and archaelogists. So your son does have options besides teaching. The pay in these fields isn’t wonderful, but money isn’t everything.
I’ve got a BA in History, and I’m going to start on my MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) sometime next year. After a few years of public librarianship, I’m planning on going for an MAPH. I figure the two graduate degrees should qualify me for some sweet archival position someplace.
LOL. Nicely done phartizan. A professor with a sense of humor? I think I like you. Where were you when I was in college? Payne N. Diaz, burundi, black455, thanks for your ideas about utilizing this passion outside of academia.