We can't be more than a year or two away from seeing the trend for Ph.D. production turn around. Revenue is rising in part, he says, because of a continuing increase in the number of job ads, but also because position announcements are getting wordier these days, and a longer ad means more money for the association. Today a lot of ads are giving more detail about the university and the program. I think search committees are sensing a bit more competition on their side of the equation. Indeed, a survey by the association last year found that the average number of applications submitted to search committees had declined, depending on the subfield, between 13 and 40 percent in the previous three years.
Historians seem to agree that faculty retirements are driving the hiring boom.
The hundreds of professors who earned their Ph.D.'s from 1961 to 1973 and who were hired in the wake of the baby boom, are approaching retirement age now. And unlike in the early 1990's, when departments often were not granted the money to replace retirees, universities are now giving departments the go-ahead. The total number of full professors in history has already declined 9 percent since 1997, the report says, and historians who earned their Ph.D.'s from 1961 to 1973 still make up almost a third of the full-time faculty members listed in the association's directory. Retirements are certainly behind the hiring blitz at Vanderbilt University. His department plans to hire five scholars this year and two more next year.