Education: History for Fun and Profit

A new institute helps scholars survive outside academia

Five years ago, Steven Hertzberg, 32, earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago. He soon learned that a degree in his field was almost worthless in the marketplace. History departments have not been flourishing of late, and the only job he could find was a part-time assistant professorship at Minnesota's Carleton College. Annual pay: $6,000. "I wanted to stay in teaching," he recalls, "but I had an antipathy toward starving." Today Hertzberg runs his own hardware store in Queens, N.Y., and makes almost...