The postgraduate career trajectories of our graduates are highly diverse (a complete list is available at http://www.history.pitt.edu/alumni/directory). Typically, most incoming students join our program with the goal of becoming a history college/university professor. The most desirable of such academic jobs are tenure-track positions at four-year colleges/universities (4YTT). And our graduates of recent years have been highly successful in securing such positions. According to comprehensive data provided by the American Historical Association in 2018 (available at https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork), our 4YTT percentage is the 13th highest out of a total of 161 History graduate programs in the US, thus placing us nationally in the top 8th percentile. One key reason for our success is that our faculty/graduate ratio of 1:1.3 allows us to offer highly individual graduate training and close mentoring.
On the other hand, a number of our students have used their History PhD to obtain non-academic positions, especially in the non-profit sector, higher education administration, government, publishing, and public history. We have thus recently made key changes to our graduate program to better prepare our students for the diverse career paths inside and outside academia.
