National Council on Public History

I am one of two public historians in the department of history at Appalachian State University, a school of about 17,000 students located in western North Carolina. We offer a BS in Applied and Public History, and a M.A. in History with a concentration in either public history, museum studies, or historic preservation. Our graduate program requires a 6 credit hour internship, which translates into 240 total working hours. Our BS program does not require an internship, but we strongly urge students to consider taking one on. Our undergraduate and graduate students have interned at local sites, throughout the U.S., and abroad. While students have been offered paid internships, or internships with stipends, at large and well-funded public history institutions, most students secure unpaid internships at smaller historical societies and museums throughout North Carolina and the southeast. If these students are lucky, the site may provide housing for free or reduced cost, even if stipends are not offered.

There is no question that these internships help public history students acquire valuable skills that simply cannot be taught by the average public history program; based on the feedback I have received from internship supervisors, our students are deeply valued as well. Yet the value of student labor does not usually translate into appropriate financial remuneration for the students. This is a problem that not only presents significant repercussions for students who do not have financial support to fall back on, but a problem that has long-term consequences for our public history program, and the field as a whole.

Our numbers in both the undergrad program and the graduate program have been relatively steady, but have taken a noticeable dip in the past year or so. While I don’t think that the prospect of unpaid internships is the only factor in our declining numbers, I know it does play a role. In the senior undergrad public history seminar I taught in Spring 2016, several students whom I consider bright prospects as future public historians vehemently told me that they could not afford to make “public history” their career. Already thousands of dollars in debt from student loans, they asked me why they should go to graduate school and be expected to intern for free (or nearly free) to gain experience, and then have no real guarantee of a job in their field? Frankly, I had no good answer for them. It is particularly compounded when, as my university is located in a relatively small town, there simply are not that many appropriate public history internships for students who need to stay in the area (whether due to family obligations, job obligations, needing to take a full load of classes, etc). The nearest cities (Greensboro, Charlotte, Asheville) are all two hours away. Students could save some money if they interned at a local site, but if all undergrad public history students pursued that option, these sites would be overwhelmed. Because of their smaller numbers, graduate students who need to stay local generally have better luck in locating an appropriate internship, but it can be a struggle.

During my seminar, I was able to connect students’ concerns about job prospects and financial hardship with recent developments in the public history “Twittersphere”—such as the #MuseumWorkersSpeak forum (https://twitter.com/MuseumWorkers), as well as the #museumsrespondtoFerguson conversation. Engaged students see the links between these conversations, and how the public history field is affected. It is an ethical struggle for me to advocate that undergraduates should pursue a master’s in public history if they do not have the financial resources; ongoing pressure from our administrators to promote our graduate program in public history compounds that ethical dilemma. It also frustrates me when bright and capable graduate students who have already given a tremendous amount of their labor, usually for free, to other institutions, are unable to find any sustainable jobs at these same institutions.

The question of whether the field of public history is at risk of becoming elitist is, unfortunately, I think a moot point. The field has certainly made significant progress in recent years with regard to issues of inclusion (both in terms of those who work at public history sites, and what is produced at these sites), but as long as undergraduate and graduate programs in public history continue to require, or strongly urge, students to take on internships for the “experience”—and the majority of internships are unpaid or deeply underpaid—then the field will remain elitist.

During the workshop, I look forward to hearing and discussing the experiences of colleagues who work with public history programs at other colleges and universities. How do you address the financial dilemmas of students who are unable to find a paid internship? Are your program numbers suffering, and if so, why do you think that is? If you are in a program that has both an undergrad and grad program in public history, do you feel pressure to recruit undergraduates to your graduate program—even knowing that many of these students may go even further into debt once they’re in the grad program? I would also like to hear from public history practitioners who must necessarily take on interns, whether paid or unpaid, in order to maintain their sites. In lieu of significant payment, what can these sites do to assist interns? (Letters of recommendation are great, of course, but what else can be done?) Engaging in dialogue with practitioners at smaller, underfunded historical societies and museums would be very valuable to me, because these sites (rather than larger organizations like the Smithsonian) make up the majority of internship sites for our students.

–Andrea Burns, Appalachian State University

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