History departments are facing increased pressure to track where their Ph.D. recipients end up. Here are employment data for students who received Ph.D.'s in 2010 from 17 of the top-20 history programs, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Officials at history departments at Cornell and Stanford Universities and at the University of California at Berkeley said they could not provide data because they were too busy.

 
University Total No. of Ph.D.'s Percent in tenure-track jobs Percent in postdocs Percent lecturers, sdjuncts, or visiting professors Percent in nonteaching academic jobs Percent high-school teachers Percent in nonacademic jobs Percent independent scholars Percent unemployed/unknown
Brown U. 8 25% 13% 25%         38%
Columbia U. 21 28% 19% 14% 10% 5% 10%   14%
Duke U. 2 50%   50%          
Harvard U. 13 46% 31%       15%   8%
Johns Hopkins U. 7 43% 28% 14%     14%    
New York U. 18 56% 22% 6% 6%       11%
Northwestern U. 9 33%   22%   11% 11%   22%
Princeton U. 20 55% 15% 5%         25%
Rutgers U. 7 43% 29%         29%  
U. of California at Los Angeles* 21 38% 5% 33%     5%   14%
U. of Chicago 25 18% 14% 55%     5%   6%
U. of Michigan 20 40% 25% 20% 10%       5%
U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 15 40% 7% 20% 7%       27%
U. of Pennsylvania 10 30% 10% 50%         10%
U. of Texas at Austin 10 60%     30%   10%    
U. of Wisconsin at Madison 15 30% 10% 20%         10%
Yale U. 20 55% 5% 25%         15%

*Total includes 1 student who passed away.
Note: Some percentages do not add to 100% due to rounding.
 
Source: Chronicle reporting
Correction, 2/14/12 at 2:57 p.m.: Numbers for the University of Wisconsin at Madison have been corrected. The program had 15 Ph.D. graduates, not 10, and the proportion of Madison's Ph.D.'s who were lecturers, adjuncts, or visiting professors was 20 percent, not 50 percent.