<p>"Lots of reading that you will actually need to have read/be familiar with for class. Add 9-12 hours of physical class time plus 10-20 hours of TA responsibilities as well. "
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/1224733-history-phd-really-worth-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/1224733-history-phd-really-worth-4.html</a></p>
<p>So what should you do if you want to study something and earn money from it, without going to grad school, without having to go to classes or teach, and instead just purely study only sources that you are actually interested in?</p>
<p>I don’t gather what you mean.</p>
<p>“If you want to study something and earn money from it” as in, be employed by an outside organization to create historical studies, that organization is going to want to see some evidence that you are capable of producing historical scholarship of acceptable quality. The gold standard for that is the conferral of a Ph.D - which requires extensive study and intensive historical research.</p>
<p>You seem to be asking if there’s some easy way to skip all the hard learning stuff and just get paid to do what you want. The answer, in general, is no.</p>
<p>Ok, but PhD also requires spending time on going to class and teaching - which I would rather spend in extensive study and intensive historical research.</p>
<p>Well, to earn money without providing a benefit like teaching to the university, you either need outside sources of funding (win some fellowships), or you need to convince them you’re such a rising star in your field that they should be dropping everything to come pay you to study there. There is something called a research assistantship in graduate school, and perhaps in exceptional cases, they’ll arrange so the student does not have to teach. I haven’t heard of a specific case where this has happened, though.</p>
<p>Also, the number of hours of teaching can vary a lot. If you teach a class for fewer hours a week, it could be less pay, but that might be fine depending on your goals. </p>
<p>You can get your PhD somewhere that has nearly no course requirements, and where the few requirements that exist do not require much specific class attendance. This one is actually pretty feasible.</p>
<p>Right. I’m sure it varies wildly by field, but the schools I interviewed at (molecular/cell/micro bio type) had basically a single term of teaching and the typical ~1.5 years of courses. That level of non-research commitment might not be most people’s ideal but it shouldn’t be taxing enough to force someone into a non-PhD life path if a PhD is what they really want.</p>
<p>12 hours of class and 20 hours of TA-work a week that does not taper off after the first year or two is another story…</p>
<p>Ok, but PhD also requires spending time on going to class and teaching - which I would rather spend in extensive study and intensive historical research.</p>
<p>Then skip graduate school and go to the library.</p>
<p>In the event that you become a professor, what do you think you’ll be doing? Even at the most elite private universities, history professors spend time teaching classes, providing service to the university, mentoring students, and dealing with academic politics. But the vast majority of history professor jobs are not at elite research universities; they are at teaching-focused universities, so likely to majority of your time will be spent doing these other things and you will hav to squeeze research in when you can.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to teach, take classes and round yourself as a scholar - don’t go to graduate school. Just get a library card and read the books you want. You can study history, even intensively, without going to grad school.</p>
<p>*If you don’t want to teach, take classes and round yourself as a scholar - don’t go to graduate school. Just get a library card and read the books you want. You can study history, even intensively, without going to grad school. *</p>
<p>I’d love that, but how would I make a living out of it?</p>
<p>You could write and sell books, though being a good-selling author is not easy. Otherwise, you would have to find someone willing to hire you despite the fact that you are not as well qualified to develop historical research as someone who has earned a Ph.D. And given the number of history Ph.Ds out there looking for jobs, that’s a tall order. Why hire someone who may not know anything about anything, when you can hire a university-certified historian?</p>
<p>You have answered your own question here. There is no easy way to make a living that involves doing everything you want and nothing you don’t.</p>
<p>If you want a serious career as a historian, you have to buck up and earn a Ph.D.</p>
<p>I’d love that, but how would I make a living out of it?</p>
<p>Do something else.</p>
<p>The majority of people who work at museums do not have PhDs in history. There are people who staff historical and cultural centers who do not have PhDs in history. There are people who work at universities, in departments of history and related students, who do not have PhDs in history. You can work one of those jobs, probably with a BA or MA in history or some related field.</p>
<p>I’m not just saying this to you, but to all the potential graduate students that may be reading this thread. Graduate school is NOT a continuation of undergrad, and it is certainly not a paradise where you only immerse yourself deep within the books that you like to read, ignoring everything else. That happens…sometimes. But you will have to take classes, and write papers in those classes. This will take you 2-3 years. You will have to learn two languages (maybe three), and take exams in those languages. You will have to pass qualifying exams, which involve reading lots and lots of books, most not in your area, for months on end and either writing furiously or taking the exam orally with your advisors. And you will have to write a dissertation, which hopefully is on something interesting to you but that you will likely despise by the time you are through. And realistically speaking, all of this will take you at least five years and likely 6-8 years.</p>
<p>And those are just the requirements for the degree. Politically speaking, you will also have to assist in teaching classes, and likely for the latter part of your degree you will be the instructor of record for a class (at least, if you want a prayer of landing a job, you will). You will also have to do some small amounts of service to show that you are a team player. My graduate department has grad student “jobs” such as keeping up the website, organizing prospectives weekend, coordinating orientation, etc.</p>
<p>But the other thing is that if you don’t want to do those things as a grad student, you will be miserable as a professor, because professors do a lot of things besides just doing the scholarly work they like. Academia is about a lot more than sitting around reading the books that you like. Every job you will ever have will have some components you don’t like; what you have to decide is whether you can deal with the parts you don’t like for the joy of the parts you do.</p>