Two Yale humanities scholars at the beginning of their careers reflect on the uncertainty that lies ahead.
The Humanities Quadrangle at Yale, where the Whitney Humanities Program is located. (Credit: Buckley Institute)
Jack Ehlert
Staff Writer, The Buckley Beacon
Despite a strong showing in March, many Americans, especially recent graduates, are still feeling the crunch of a weak labor market. Even the deep pockets of higher education aren’t immune to the dearth of hiring, leaving highly educated, seemingly valuable owners of Ph.D. degrees left in a crisis of purpose.
In recent decades, the worthiness of humanities Ph.D.’s in particular has undergone a drastic change. The proportion of students studying traditional humanities subjects at both the undergraduate and graduate levels has been in steady decline since reaching a high point in the 1960s and 1970s—while about 17% of bachelor’s degrees earned in 1967 were in humanities subjects. As of 2022, those same subjects account for just under 4% of all bachelor’s degrees.
Alongside American students responding to the labor market and moving away from the humanities, the Trump administration has accelerated the decline in its response to the field’s politics, slashing federal funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The NEH was founded in 1965 with the notion that “the arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States.” Sixty years later in May 2025, when the Trump administration released its budget proposal for the 2026 fiscal year, it proposed that rather than renewing the NEH’s $210 million budget, the NEH be given $38 million “to conduct an orderly shutdown of the Agency.”
Congress did not grant the administration’s request and instead, with bipartisan support, renewed the previous NEH budget for the 2026 fiscal year. Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s budget proposal for the NEH in the 2027 fiscal year once again “proposes to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and provides $38 million to conduct an orderly shutdown of the Agency.”
Caught in the middle of the storm are young humanities scholars graduating with Ph.D.’s, entering one of the most uncertain times for academics in recent memory. The Beacon interviewed two scholars beginning their careers in the academic humanities to find out why some are still forging ahead in the face of such uncertainty.
Dr. David Kretz is a postdoctoral associate at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. He earned his Ph.D. in April 2025 from the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought, a program that, along with almost all of UChicago’s graduate programs in the arts and humanities, has paused enrollment for the 2026-2027 cycle.
In a press release, UChicago stated the purpose of the pause was to allow time “to navigate the immediate uncertainties of the coming academic year, as well as… the changing landscape of higher education.”
When asked about the federal funding cuts to the humanities, Kretz stated, “I know people who were finalists for positions when suddenly the line was cancelled because funding cuts came through—the federal funding cuts or other funding cuts.”
According to the 2024 annual Survey of Earned Doctorates, only around 58% of humanities Ph.D. graduates in 2024 reported having a definite commitment lined up upon graduation compared to 67% in 1990. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences reports that “compared with graduates from other major academic fields, humanities and arts Ph.D.’s were the least likely to have a definite employment or postdoctoral study commitment when they finished their programs.”
“The job market is abysmally bad,” Kretz explained. “It’s approaching the situation where you’re playing the lottery.”
“The prospect of failing this lottery comes with a certain kind of terror,” Kretz continued, “It feels like if you don’t win this lottery you might be at the end of a certain life. You might have to rethink completely who you are.”
Despite counting himself among the “lucky ones” who did win this lottery, so to speak, Kretz is nonetheless keenly aware of the fact that he was almost not so lucky.
“My work is at the intersection of several fields,” Kretz told The Beacon, “I was able to apply to a somewhat unusually large number of jobs—not quite ninety jobs, I think it was eighty-six.”
“That said, Yale was the one offer I got.”
In response to concerns about the future of higher education and the viability of a career inside the academy, some scholars have made attempts to bring their work outside of the academy through platforms like YouTube and Substack.
When asked about the rise of the so-called “Substack scholar,” Kretz responded, “In general, I think it is a good thing if there is a vibrant sphere of public discourse on all kinds of media platforms–YouTube, Substack, whatsoever.”
“In some sense, I’m very welcoming or hopeful or optimistic about these alternatives,” he continued. “It’s more shooting from the hip, it’s quicker. But can it sustain a whole research paradigm with journals and conferences and whatnot, and really scholars working full time on these sorts of things?”
“I don’t think they can replace the core functions of universities.”
The Beacon also interviewed Henry Straughan, who is currently a Ph.D. student in Yale’s philosophy department and has been since 2022. When asked about how he felt about the prospect of being on the job market, he responded, “A bit of trepidation, a bit of excitement.”
“Recent developments have made the job market even tighter than it was a few years ago, and even then, it didn’t look that healthy a few years ago… I mean specifically the recent federal funding cuts and the endowment tax.”
Despite widespread uncertainty across the academic job market as a whole, Straughan emphasized how fortunate he feels to be at Yale. “In some ways I’m in a good position,” Straughan remarked. “It’s nice being a Yale Ph.D. student. The Yale philosophy department has a very good placement record. Not that it guarantees I get a job, but this is a department which has a very good track record for getting their Ph.D. students jobs.”
Regarding the rise of academic humanities discourse online in such forums as YouTube and Substack, Straughan said, “One wants to see bridges between the academy and the public forum.” But he, like Kretz, remains skeptical. “The danger with all these things is that in making it publicly available, you lose both the complexity and the rigor that makes it valuable.”
When asked if he had ever thought about pursuing an alternative career path outside of the academy, Straughan told The Beacon, “If I’m honest, I’ve never seriously considered anything else.”
“I’m quite set on academia. It’s perfectly possible that it just doesn’t work out and I have to shift later down the road,” Straughan continued. “It seems rational to me to whole-heartedly commit to academia and if it doesn’t work out, figure that out down the line.”
“I’ve thought about other things and decided I wouldn’t fancy doing them.”