By Sofia Rasmussen
In a world governed by technological dexterity, it is safe to say that a PhD in humanities is placed quite at an opposite pole. Non-technical in nature and in general concerned with the non-empirical past or present, many European humanities students wonder how they can build a rewarding career in today’s science-oriented world. Humanities students want some degree of confidence that the money they’re putting into either a traditional PhD program or one of the best online PhD programs is going to be worth the blood, sweat, tears, and cash. Fortunately, the outlook is good: the European government and private sectors are continually opening up new positions that demand the skills and expertise of humanities PhDs.
The European educational system – while having a small percentage of the overall GDP – is still financed in multiple directions, by the EU. Public funding will continue to be the primary source of funding, as the majority of European universities are state-owned institutions. The European Union’s will continue to provide international funding, through the CORDIS Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities program, which is built around highly elevated cross-country and cross-subject research, having specific objectives and a well-defined life-cycle. Private funding will be complementary, but mainly restricted to research grants and scholarships.
Concerning the job market outlook for new humanities and human sciences PhDs, it can be said since it is demand driven; it will reflect the future interest and needs of a specific education and training. Academic teaching jobs are expected to shrink a small amount because the humanities departments have on average a decreasing number of students, as a consequence of the fact that many new students turn to technology or finance careers that provide a higher start-up salary, and from those who pick up the humanities not all earn a PhD, many switch to advertising and public relations, civil service, or other non-academic field where they can use their transferable skills.
However, given the relative linguistic and cultural fragmentation found in Europe (23 official languages and 6 semi-official ones) – as opposed to the United States, for example – there will be more academic research jobs available, where PhDs can put their knowledge to better use. Win-win situations will certainly benefit translators and interpreters, who will have consistent work to do, and by doing it will provide society with a greater understanding of neighbor cultures.
One major challenge that lies ahead for the coming generation of humanities PhDs is dealing with the traditional model of academic tenure which overemphasizes the quantity of published material, neglecting the quality control. In part due to this model, society tends to view the humanities as a second-tier academic area, which in turn has led to fewer academic posts and less funding for the humanities. Academic posts for humanities PhDs are likely to remain relatively few in number, so such PhDs will generally gave to find non-academic employment.
One major trend that is occurring in the present and will probably continue to grow is the digitization of humanities and human sciences related work. Resources and examples of this type projects can be found at the Careers in Digital Humanities for PhDs and Postdocs Service of Penn University of Pennsylvania. The themes are diverse and can vary from the digital legal and police records in Harlem to mapping the Enlightenment.
In Europe, similar projects are being organized by the Digital Research Infrastructure for Arts and Humanities. Professional philosophers and historians will also have to adapt to this trend and eventually build collaborative online research databases of older texts and studies, as to avoid excessive atomization of their theses.
The future, will most likely have Europe’s humanities PhDs in it, but probably in a different form than that of today, more self-selective, collaborating and integrating with technology and other fields, and not rejecting them.
