> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 13:25:26 -0700
> From: Julian.Martin@ualberta.ca (Julian Martin)
>
> A quick scan of the faculty listing in Canada shows that some
> two-thirds (or more) of my colleagues received a U.K. doctorate (typically
> Cambridge, Oxford or London); very few have doctorates from the U.S.A;
I had heard that Canadian law prohibited hiring a foreign citizen for a
job if a qualified Canadian applied; accordingly, when I was in grad
school neither I, nor any of my U.S. friends studying British history,
applied for British history positions at Canadian institutions. Is this
prohibition apocryphal?
Do Canadian history programs more closely resemble British or American programs?
> The question remains: whether US students of British history should
> do a Ph.D. in the USA or no? As ever, it depends on individual
> circumstances, but equally clearly US students should consider a UK doctoral
> degree to be a real and not a fanciful option.
I'm a U.S. citizen who, thanks to the benevolence of Rotary
International, earned a British M.A. degree (from the University of
Birmingham). I did my Ph.D. work here in the U.S., at North
Carolina/Chapel Hill. Birmingham's program was - and I'm sure still is -
an excellent one, and I learned a tremendous amount in the time I spent
there. However, it was the time I spent working on my Ph.D. at Chapel
Hill that prepared me to teach in the U.S. university system. Here at
the University of Texas-Pan American I was hired as a specialist in
British History, but I also teach the U.S. history surveys, World Civ
surveys, and upper-division classes in early-modern and modern Europe.
If I had earned my Ph.D. from a British University (and I gave it serious
thought), I would not have been prepared for this job.
> I suspect however that at the
> root there may well be in US academic British history hiring decisions a
> cultural bias AGAINST British Ph.D. degrees -- the obverse of the tendency
> that obtains elsewhere.
Interesting - my impression (admittedly based on anecdotal evidence) has
always been the reverse. It may depend on the nature of the position: if
the position is for British history, and the Department really only
expects the candidate to teach British history, then I suspect someone
with a Ph.D. from a British University would have a real edge. If,
however, the job is for British History, but the candidate is expected to
be able to teach a wide variety of other courses as well, someone with a
less-specialized U.S. degree will better fit the needs of the
department. If this assessment is accurate, then a degree from a British
University would be an asset when applying to a U.S. university with a
large history faculty, but to a mid-sized or small department a
British degree might be seen as a liability.
Michael Weaver
Dept. of History and Philosophy
University of Texas-Pan American
MWC67F@PANAM.EDU