Bunche earned a master's degree in political science in 1928 and a doctorate in 1934, while he was already teaching in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, an historically black college. At the time, it was typical for doctoral candidates to start teaching before completion of their dissertations. He was the first African American to gain a PhD in political science from an American university. From 1936 to 1938, Ralph Bunche studied anthropology and conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and at the London School of Economics (LSE), and later at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.