Past Committee. This committee has completed its work and is no longer active.

The culmination of a multiyear inquiry into the structure and nature of graduate history education today, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century was published by the University of Illinois Press for the AHA. This marks the first exploration of graduate training for historians in more than 40 years and the best available study of doctoral education in any major academic discipline.

The report reflects the views and efforts of a cross-section of the entire historical profession. It builds upon a detailed review of the existing research and data on graduate education, plus an unprecedented and exhaustive survey of history doctoral programs. The authors visited history departments across the country and consulted with hundreds of individual historians, graduate students, deans, academic and nonacademic employers of historians, as well as other stakeholders in graduate education.

In the last 40 years, the ethnic and gender composition of both graduate students and faculty has changed, historical methodologies have been challenged and refined, and the boundaries of historical inquiry have expanded. The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century addresses all of these revolutionary intellectual and demographic changes. Combining a detailed snapshot of the profession with a rigorous analysis of recent changes, this volume should become the definitive guide to strategic planning for history departments. It includes practical suggestions for managing institutional change as well as advice for everyone involved in the advanced training of historians, from department chairs to graduate students, and from university administrators to the AHA itself.

In the course of preparing their study, the AHA’s Committee on Graduate Education (2002–2004) drew upon and gathered a substantial body of quantitative and qualitative data. This site gathers together a range of ancillary materials and reports that enrich and extend the materials in the printed version of the report.