Dive Brief:

• A $1.6-million grant has been awarded to help history doctorate graduates get jobs.
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant goes to the American Historical Association and four universities.
• One of the goals of the grant is to help history doctorates accept that success is not defined only by landing a tenure-track position.

Dive Insight:

Columbia University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, and the University of New Mexico will each receive about $300,000, with the association receiving the rest. The job market is bleak for graduate students in history and other humanities specialties, as The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Less than 43% of new recipients of history doctorate degrees in 2011 reported definite employment when they graduated, the lowest percentage in at least 40 years. In 2012, the percentage was 44%.

According to the history association, the long-term goal is to establish a "new norm" where the doctoral grads know how to land both academic and non-academic jobs. One example: Columbia will develop courses connecting history doctors to societal problems, such as applying data mining to examine the history of labor, management, and business issues.