SAN DIEGO — As history graduate students arrived in the large table-filled ballroom here Friday to try to learn how to find a job, the room was seriously overheated. These would-be professors didn’t need any more sweat or discomfort.

The temperature was adjusted, but the challenges facing those on the job market were an undercurrent here throughout the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Attendance was down, in no small part because history job openings are way down, so far fewer departments are doing interviews at the meeting. While the graduate students here talked strategy and hoped to pick up leads on positions or how to make themselves more marketable, many professors were talking about whether doctoral programs should change — both in light of the tight job market and out of larger concerns about graduate education.

Some here argued that this is a time to focus on helping students get through and promoting alternative employment options that make use of their skills outside academe. Others, however, argued that this is a time to redouble efforts to reform graduate programs, with some going so far as to suggest (with pushback from others) that graduate enrollments may be too large and that history graduate students may not be paying enough attention to issues that are “relevant.”

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