Shortage of PhDs in Canada?

Two days ago, I posted AHA data on the glut of history PhDs in the United States. Today, the Conference Board of Canada, the mouthpiece of big business in this country, has published a study complaining that Canada produces too few PhDs.   In Canada, 209 people complete PhDs out of every 100,000 between the ages of 25 and 29 . The figures in other countries are: the United States  289 per 100,000; France 259 per 100,000; and Japan 210 per 100,000.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? I don’t know. People with PhDs helped to plan the Iraq War.

Historian Jack Granatstein on Immigration and Social Memory

My Christmas Break Reading

Here is a list of the books I read over the Christmas break, in no particular order.

Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Andrew Lambert, The Gates of Hell: Sir John Franklin’s Tragic Quest for the North West Passage

Daniel Headrick, Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present

Robert E. Wright, One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe.

Peter F. Hamilton, Judas Unchained

Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Part of the Oxford History of the United States series. Fantastic book. Scholarly yet accessible to ordinary people– the type of historical book I admire the most.

Robert E. Wright, The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance

Gerald Friesen on University History Teaching

In this two-part video, University of Manitoba historian Gerald Friesen talks about effective history teaching at the university level.

Job Market News for History PhDs

The American Historical Association has released statistics regarding the job market for history PhDs in the United States.

I’m going to quote some of the more interesting things in the report:

“Openings for historians working on the United States, for instance, fell by 30.3 percent, while openings for specialists in the history the Middle East and the Islamic World fell by a slightly larger 34.5 percent. Most of the other broad fields suffered declines of around 20 percent, including world and transnational history (down 20.9 percent), European history (down 19.7 percent), and Latin American history (off 18.8 percent). Only two fields saw declines of less than five percent—African history (down 4.4 percent) and Asian history (off 3.1 percent).”

“Unfortunately, the growing number of applications for each available job was not the only problem this past year, as an unusually large number of positions were cancelled after the job was advertised—and in many cases, even after applications had been received. Of the 338 advertisers that responded to the survey, 22 percent (representing 75 positions) reported that the search had not resulted in a hire by fall 2009. Of that number, 51 indicated that the budget line had been cancelled, 9 indicated that they were still trying to complete the hire, and the rest reported that they either could not find a worthy candidate or their choice(s) had taken another offer.”

“The differences in the average number of applicants in particular fields were also reflected in the satisfaction of the job advertisers and their success in completing the search. While close to 90 percent of the advertisers for U.S. and European history jobs expressed satisfaction with the applications received, less than 80 percent of the advertisers in the fields of African, Asian, and Latin American history expressed similar satisfaction with their pool of candidates. Openings in fields outside U.S. and European history were also less likely to have successfully resulted in a hire—either because negotiations were still ongoing or the candidate had accepted another position.”

The report also said this:

“One real alternative now for many history PhDs seems to lie in employment outside of academia. As our recent study of public history professionals demonstrates, history PhDs employed outside of higher education are generally quite satisfied with their jobs and earning salaries comparable to, if not better than, the salaries in academia. Unfortunately, very few programs prepare their students for jobs outside of academia, placing most of their emphases and expectations on preparing their students for the relatively small—and at least for the present, diminishing—number of jobs at research universities. Until programs reduce the number of students in their programs and revise the culture of history doctoral training, the sense of crisis in the job market for history PhDs seems only likely to grow worse for the foreseeable future.”

As I said above, this data relates to the history job market in the United States. If someone has equivalent data for Canada, the United Kingdom, or other countries, please send it to me so that I can post it online.

The Politics of the Film Avatar

Tim Fernholz & David Weigel discuss the politics of Avatar.

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Quebec Culture Lessons for Immigrants

A few days ago, the Toronto Star ran a series of stories by reporter Andrew Chung on the Quebec government’s new immigration policies. (For the benefit of my growing number of non-Canadian readers, I should explain that while Quebec is part of the Canadian federation, Quebec largely runs its own immigration system). Immigrants to Quebec must now sign a contract promising to abide by Quebec’s values, speak French in public, and attend a 90 minute seminar designed to inculcate such values. The instructor in the seminar visited by reporter Mr Chung stressed the rights of women and homosexuals, which prompted one Algerian immigrant to say that the hierarchy of rights in Quebec “goes like this: children first, then women, then dogs … then men”.

I don’t agree with everything Andrew Chung says in his article. For instance, he states that visible minorities are under-represented on Quebec TV relative to programs in English-speaking Canada or the United States. I don’t know if this is entirely a fair comparison, since almost half the population of the United States is non-white. Moreover, as someone who watches a fair bit of Quebec TV in the interests of improving my French, I can say that there are a fair number of visible minority TV personalities in that province, such as Gregory Charles. Nevertheless, the series by Chung is very interesting to me as a Canadian historian. In recent blog posts, I have spoken about the federal government’s new citizenship guide for immigrants, Discover Canada, and have linked to historian Jack Granatstein’s opinion piece on immigration policy.  Unlike the Quebec integration seminars, the Discover Canada guide says very little about women’s rights and is strangely silent on the issue of homosexuality.

I thought I would bring people’s attention to some online resources on the topic of immigration history. First, have a look at the relevant entries in the Encyclopedia of Quebec history. You should also check out historian Harold Troper’s entry for “Immigration” in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Folks should also check out this article, which was published just before Christmas: “Quand la tourtière remplace le couscous“. Also have a look at the film Génération 101.

Video: Technology in 2010 Predictions

Some of the Guardian’s technology team predict what might be in store for 2010

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Was James Wolfe Gay?

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1771

This is the provocative title of an article in today’s Seaway Times.

Charlotte Gray Reviews Two New Books on the Search for the NW Passage

Historian Charlotte Gray has published a review of two new books on the search for the Northwest Passage.  Gray was the 2003 Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. She chairs the National History Society, and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.