Part II. Undergraduate and Graduate Education in the Humanities Section B. Graduate Education

NOTE TO READERS: Please include the following reference when citing data from this page: "American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Indicators, http://HumanitiesIndicators.org". Print Section

Indicator II-10 Advanced Degrees in the Humanities

Indicator II-11 Disciplinary Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities

Indicator II-12 Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities

Indicator II-13 Gender Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities

Indicator II-14 Humanities Degree Completions: An International Comparison

Indicator II-15 Years to Attainment of a Humanities Doctorate

Indicator II-16 Paying for Graduate School

Indicator II-17 Attrition in Doctorate Programs

See the

Whereas Section A dealt with trends in the character and outcomes of undergraduate education in the humanities, the indicators presented here take up these issues with respect to graduate education. Data are provided on the number of master’s and doctoral degrees awarded in the field over the last several decades, as well as on the progress made in the areas of gender equality and racial/ethnic diversity. As has been the case for undergraduate degrees, the absolute number of graduate degrees awarded in the humanities has rebounded since the mid-1980s, when degree numbers troughed after a roughly 15-year tumble from the historic highs of the early 1970s. At the same time, however, because of a large concurrent increase in the number of advanced degrees awarded in other fields, the percentage of all graduate degrees awarded in humanities disciplines in the early 21st century was much smaller than it was four decades earlier. In terms of diversity, a graduate degree in humanities was as likely to be awarded to a woman as to a man in 2007 (somewhat more likely at the master’s level), but minority students were still greatly underrepresented relative to their proportion of the total U.S. population. When placed in an international context, the United States emerges as a strong producer of humanities-trained postsecondary graduates.

Within the academic humanities, the quality of life for students in doctorate programs and the job prospects of newly minted Ph.D.’s have been areas of concern in the last decade. Given a paucity of data, many observers have had to rely on incomplete or anecdotal evidence in their consideration of these issues. This section brings together such data on doctorate education as do exist in an effort to supply at least partial answers to such questions as:

	What are the costs (both temporal and monetary) of obtaining a Ph.D. in the humanities?
	What is the “survival rate” of Ph.D. students in the humanities—that is, how many students who begin doctorate programs actually finish?

Although data on the latter subject have traditionally been scarce, three relatively new bodies of data (described in greater detail in Indicator II-17, Attrition in Doctorate Programs) shed much-needed light on the drop-out rates in graduate humanities programs and how these compare to the rates of other disciplines.

Indicator II-10	Advanced Degrees in the Humanities
Print II-10

Updated (3/25/2011) with data for academic years 2007–2008 and 2008–2009.

See the

As was the case at the bachelor’s degree level (see Indicator II-1, Undergraduate Degrees in the Humanities), the last four decades have seen dramatic growth, marked decline, and then recovery of the academic humanities with respect to the completion of advanced degrees. As Figures II-10a and II-10b illustrate, while the period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s was one of increasing numbers of master’s and doctoral degree completions in the humanities, this trend reversed as the 1970s progressed, so that by the mid-1980s the humanities were awarding approximately 50% as many advanced degrees. By the late 1980s, however, degree completions were again on the rise. By 1994 the number of master’s degrees had reached 69% of its 1971 high. Then, after a decline in completions in the late 1990s, master’s degree completions picked up again in 2002 and increased almost every year through 2009. In 2009, the number of master’s completions was approximately 70% of the 1971 zenith. Doctorate completions reached the height of their recovery from the 1980s slump in 2000, when the number reached 84% of its 1973 peak. Doctorate completions then declined through 2005. But completions picked up in subsequent years, with the 2009 total of 3,984 constituting 82% of 1973’s historic high (when standardized National Science Foundation disciplinary categories are used to count humanities degrees—when the National Center for Education Statistics’ Classification of Instructional Programs is used, the counts for both master’s and doctoral degrees are considerably higher; for an explanation of the differences between the two classification systems, see the Note on the Data Used to Construct Degree-Related Indicators).

Figure II-10a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-10b, Full Size Supporting Data

Graduate humanities programs, like their undergraduate counterparts, experienced a substantial loss of share over the 1970s and 1980s—that is, a reduction in the number of all advanced degrees awarded in the humanities relative to the number awarded in other fields. While the absolute numbers of advanced degrees conferred in the humanities rose well above the mid-1980s low, the even more substantial growth in the numbers of advanced degrees awarded in other fields served to keep the humanities’ share of all master’s and doctoral degrees well below the record levels observed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Between the mid-1980s and 2009 the humanities’ share of all master’s and first professional degrees ranged from 23% to 37% of the 1967 peak level. While the 1990s saw fairly steady increases in the humanities’ share of all doctoral degrees, the proportion shrank again during the first half of the next decade. Even with a subsequent uptick in completions, in 2009 the humanities’ share was less than half of its 1973 high.

Over the last two decades, humanities master’s degrees have constituted less than 5% of all degrees awarded at the master’s and first professional degree level (Figure II-10c; see the Note on the Definition of Advanced Degrees). At the doctoral level, the percentage of degrees awarded in the humanities has been somewhat greater, ranging from 7% to 11% of all degrees over this time period (Figure II-10d). In contrast, science degrees represented 43%–49% of all doctorates during the same period.

Figure II-10c, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-10d, Full Size Supporting Data

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-11	Disciplinary Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities
Print II-11

Updated (3/4/2010) with data from 2007.

See the

In 2007, at both the master’s and doctoral degree levels, English was the most common area in which advanced degrees in the humanities were completed. Approximately a third of all humanities degrees at both levels were awarded by English departments (Figures II-11a and II-11b; data are provided only for 2007, the most current year for which information is available, because the disciplinary distribution of graduate degrees has changed little since 1987, the first year for which such data are available; see the Note on the Data Used to Construct Degree-Related Indicators).

Figure II-11a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-11b, Full Size Supporting Data

At the master’s level, general humanities degrees represented 15.0% of all humanities degrees, making them the second most common type of humanities degree awarded. At the doctoral level, the percentage of such general degrees was far smaller. History and OTE languages awarded larger shares of degrees at the doctoral level than at the master’s level, and these disciplines, together with English, constituted the majority of Ph.D. completions. Another notable difference between the two degree levels was in the percentage of degrees awarded in philosophy. In 2007, philosophy degrees were only 3.9% of the master’s degrees awarded but constituted 9.5% of all doctorates.

The smallest share of degrees at each level, less than 1%, was awarded in archeology. As was the case at the bachelor’s level (see Indicator II-2, Disciplinary Distribution of Undergraduate Degrees), although scholarship concerning race and gender grew considerably over the last several decades, students doing graduate work in these areas continued to receive their degrees in established disciplines. In 2007, the share of all advanced humanities degrees awarded in ethnic/gender/cultural studies was approximately 2.5%.

Indicator II-12	Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities
Print II-12

Updated (3/16/2010) with data from 2007.

See the

The percentage of advanced degrees in the humanities awarded to students from traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups increased between 1995 and 2007 (see the Note on Data Used to Construct Degree-Related Indicators). By 2007 the share of humanities master’s degrees awarded to these students had grown to 11.5%, up from 7.9% in the mid-1990s (Figure II-12a; see the Note on the Definition of Master’s Degrees and First Professional Degrees). Over the same period, the percentage of doctorates bestowed on minority students increased by four percentage points, reaching 10.7% by 2007 (Figure II-12b).

At the master’s level, the share of humanities degrees going to members of traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups tended to fall somewhat short of that for all fields during this period, and this gap grew over time. In the case of doctoral degrees, the percentage of awards to minority students was consistently close to the percentage in all fields combined. (For an explanation of how these percentages were determined, see the Note on the Calculation of Shares of Degrees Awarded to Members of Traditionally Underrepresented Ethnic Groups For information regarding the racial/ethnic composition of the total U.S. population, see the Note on Racial/Ethnic Composition of Total U.S. Population.)

Figure II-12a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-12b, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-12c depicts the ethnic composition of the master’s and first professional degree recipient population for selected fields in 2007. In that year, while the humanities awarded a small percentage of master’s degrees to African American students (4.7%) relative to several other fields, the humanities had one of the highest rates of receipt by Hispanics (6.2%). At the doctoral level, African American students were awarded a far greater percentage of degrees in education and the social service professions than in any other field (Figure II-12d). However, when education and the social service professions are excluded, the humanities were among the fields awarding the largest shares of doctorates to these students (4.5%). The proportion of humanities doctorates awarded to Hispanic students was comparable to that for African American students.

In 2007, the humanities awarded approximately 4% of all advanced degrees to students of Asian descent. This was a smaller share than for any field except education. American Indian students and those of Native Alaskan ancestry were awarded less than 1% of all advanced degrees in the humanities.

Figure II-12c, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-12d, Full Size Supporting Data

One of the most striking features of the 2007 data is the share of advanced humanities degree awards to temporary residents. The attraction of U.S. graduate programs in science and engineering to international students has been widely acknowledged. Less well appreciated is the fact that U.S. humanities departments also bestowed a nonnegligible share of their degrees (7.9% at the master’s level, 17.9% at the doctoral) on international students.

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-13	Gender Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities
Print II-13

Updated (4/2/2010) with data from 2007.

See the

Since 1966, the humanities have been one of the fields with the most balanced gender distribution of degrees at the master’s level. While master’s degrees were awarded somewhat more often to men than women in the mid-1960s, by 1970, gender parity had been achieved. Women subsequently went on to become the majority of humanities master’s recipients, garnering 61% of all degrees awarded in 2007 (Figure II-13a). At the beginning of the 21st century, only education/social service professions and the health sciences awarded a substantially greater percentage of master’s degrees to women than did the humanities. Business, engineering, law, and physical sciences awarded a considerably smaller share. At the master’s level, as at the bachelor’s, the percentage of humanities degrees awarded to women has been traditionally higher than that for all fields combined, though the gap has been steadily narrowing, almost disappearing in 2007 (see Indicator II-5, Gender Distribution of Undergraduate Degrees in the Humanities).

Figure II-13a, Full Size Supporting Data

In the mid 1960s, the humanities, like all other academic disciplines, awarded only a minority of doctoral degrees to women. Though they fared better in the humanities than in nearly all other fields, women still received only 19% of humanities doctorates at that time (Figure II-13b). Throughout the 1970s, however, this percentage increased steadily, so that by the early 1980s, women represented approximately 45% of all new humanities doctoral degree recipients.

As the 1980s continued, growth of women’s share of humanities degrees slowed, and gender parity was not reached until the mid-1990s. Thereafter, doctoral degrees continued to be distributed quite evenly between men and women, in contrast to the lower degree levels where the share of female degree recipients continued to grow. Nonetheless, the percentage of humanities doctorates awarded to women has traditionally been greater than that for all fields combined. By 2007, however, the situation was similar to that at the master’s level: the share of humanities doctorates awarded to women was approximately the same as that for all fields combined.

Figure II-13b, Full Size Supporting Data

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-14	Humanities Degree Completions: An International Comparison
Print II-14

Updated (4/2/2010) with data from 2007.

As other indicators have revealed, over the past 40 years the humanities have become less prominent in American universities in terms of the proportion of degrees awarded (see Indicator II-1, Undergraduate Degrees in the Humanities, and Indicator II-10, Advanced Degrees in the Humanities). But historical comparisons are not the only relevant assessment of the United States’ strength in the humanities. An international picture offers a different but equally valuable perspective on the status of higher education in the humanities in American society.

Each year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gathers a wealth of data on the education-related investments and outcomes of its member nations. In order to arrive at meaningful comparisons among countries that have substantially different educational systems, the OECD uses the International Standard Classification of Education, which was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the early 1970s to facilitate the efforts of the United Nations and other organizations to aggregate and present international education statistics. (For a roster of the disciplines that UNESCO includes within the humanities, see Humanities as Defined by the International Standard Classification of Education.) Unlike the Humanities Indicators, UNESCO treats theology as a humanities discipline (theology degrees constituted 1% of all degrees awarded by U.S. institutions in 2007).

Figure II-14 compares the percentages of all tertiary degrees (U.S. bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees are all considered tertiary degrees) OECD countries awarded in the humanities and arts in 2007. The United States ranked fourth among the 27 OECD countries for which data were available (data are presented only for 2007, the most current year for which such information is available, because the U.S.’ position in the rankings changed little over the several preceding years). The U.S. percentage was similar to that of Italy and approximately five points lower than the humanities degree leader, Japan, which bestows nearly 15% of its tertiary degrees in humanities disciplines.

Figure II-14, Full Size Supporting Data

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-15	Years to Attainment of a Humanities Doctorate
Print II-15

Updated (1/18/2012) with data from 2009.

Obtaining a doctoral degree in any field involves a significant investment of time, energy, and monetary resources (both tuition and foregone earnings). But as data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) shows, the road to the humanities Ph.D. has traditionally been an especially long one: from 1979 to 2009, the median number of years from the start of graduate school to a doctorate award was consistently greater in the humanities than in the sciences and engineering (Figure II-15).

Figure II-15, Full Size Supporting Data

What the humanities do share with most other fields is a retreat from the particularly lengthy completion times recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989, the median number of years to completion of a humanities doctorate was 10.7. However by 2009, after several years of incremental decline, the time to completion was down to 9.5 years.

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-16	Paying for Graduate School
Print II-16

Updated (4/2/2010) with data from 2008.

Data from the SED indicate that since 1998, doctoral recipients in the humanities have relied overwhelmingly on teaching assistantships, grants (fellowships or dissertation grants), or their own resources to subsidize their graduate educations, with few supporting themselves through research assistantships or employer subsidies (Figure II-16a; data concerning how master’s degree recipients pay for graduate school are not currently collected by any public or private entity). However, while the proportion of humanities students who cited teaching as their primary source of financial support remained relatively constant between 1998 and 2008, these students’ reliance on their own resources steadily declined, and reliance on fellowships and grants correspondingly increased. In 2006, for the first time, as large a percentage of new Ph.D.’s cited fellowships as their primary support as cited teaching. By 2008, the share of students relying primarily on fellowships and grants exceeded, by more than two percentage points, the share whose primary support was teaching. Despite the growing importance of fellowships and grants, doctoral students in the humanities still relied more heavily on teaching as a source of income than did those in any other field (Figure II-16b). Humanities doctoral students were also more likely to draw on their own resources than were students in the natural sciences and engineering, though the proportion of humanities students who cited personal income or savings as their primary source of support was less than half the percentage of doctoral students in education who did so.

Figure II-16a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-16b, Full Size Supporting Data

While the importance of their own resources decreased relative to other forms of financial support between 1998 and 2008, humanities students’ average debt level increased (after adjusting for inflation) and recently was one of the highest in the U.S. academy. In 2008, new humanities Ph.D.’s reported an average graduate educational debt load of just under $17,000 (Figure II-16c). This average, however, masks a “feast or famine” situation with respect to the ability of students to secure graduate funding. As Figure II-16d reveals, over 50% of all humanities students awarded doctorates in 2008 emerged from their graduate programs with no educational debt. But approximately 23% of humanities students incurred more than $30,000 in debt, and over 15% carried debt loads in excess of $50,000.

Figure II-16c, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure II-16d, Full Size Supporting Data

Back to Top

---

Indicator II-17	Attrition in Doctorate Programs
Print II-17

Updated (3/25/2011)

Attrition in humanities doctorate programs is a topic of considerable interest to higher education researchers and administrators, but data that could be used to systematically assess the extent of attrition have been scarce. Information compiled by individual universities and programs suggests that attrition rates are substantial, but just how many people begin work toward a humanities Ph.D. and then drop out—and, more important, why they drop out—are significant questions that have long gone unanswered.

Fortunately, three recent studies enhance our understanding of graduate attrition. Findings from the first of these, the Council of Graduate Schools' Ph.D. Completion Project, were published in the autumn of 2007. Supported by funding from the Ford Foundation and Pfizer, Inc., the project involved 29 U.S. and Canadian research universities in collecting data on doctorate completion rates, as well as on interventions designed to raise these rates.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation–funded Graduate Education Initiative, another new source of data on attrition, involved both the implementation of a set of interventions designed to improve graduate education in 54 humanities departments in ten major universities and an evaluation of the ten-year project’s outcomes. The findings of the evaluation are described in Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2009).

The attrition data presented by the Humanities Indicators (HI) are from a third recent study, a comprehensive assessment of U.S. research-doctorate programs administered by the National Research Council (NRC) and funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and participating universities. The assessment involved the collection of a variety of data on doctorate programs, including Ph.D. completion rates. These data were then used to develop multidimensional ratings of programs at approximately 200 institutions of higher learning (see http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/Resdoc/index.htm for more information about the project). While each of the three studies mentioned here is a source of important insight regarding attrition in humanities doctorate programs, the HI has used data from the NRC assessment because this study included the largest number of programs in the greatest variety of humanities disciplines.

Doctorate completion was defined by the NRC as obtaining a degree within eight years of entering a Ph.D. program for students of the humanities, and within six years for students in other fields. A completion rate—essentially the proportion of all students entering a doctorate program who completed their Ph.D.’s within the specified number of years—was computed for every research doctorate program at the participating institutions.1 Students who finished their doctorates but not in the specified number of years were not counted as completers. The completion rates presented here are thus conservative measures of doctorate completion. The figures are also for a group of doctorate programs in a given field (or discipline), not the student population in that field. The determination of the share of all doctoral students in a given field who ultimately obtain their Ph.D.’s will require detailed analysis of individual programs’ responses to the NRC survey.

Figure II-17a depicts the interquartile range (IQR) for doctorate program completion rates in the humanities and several other fields. The IQR is widely used as a means of describing the “typical” or “usual” values exhibited by a group of persons or objects and involves excluding the most extreme values of a particular variable (in this case, doctorate program completion rate). Quartiles are statistics that divide the observations in a batch of numeric data into several groups, each of which contains 25% of the data. The lower, middle, and upper quartiles are computed by ordering the values for a particular variable from smallest to largest and then finding the values below which fall 25%, 50%, and 75% of the data. The lower quartile and the upper quartile are the two values that define the interquartile range. The middle quartile is also known as the median.

Figure II-17a, Full Size Supporting Data

The doctorate program assessment data reveal that the completion rate in the humanities is similar to that in the mathematical and physical sciences field. In both fields, the middle half of the programs graduated from slightly more than a quarter up to 55% of their students within the specified number of years (i.e., eight years for students of the humanities, six years for science students). The median program completion rate for both fields was 42%. The engineering and biological and health science fields had the highest median completion rates, 50%. The field with the lowest median completion rate, 35%, was the behavioral and social sciences. This field also had a somewhat greater range of “typical” completion rates (IQR) than others.

Median completion rates among the humanities disciplines showed considerable variation (Figure II-17b). With 56% of their students completing their Ph.D.’s within eight years, theater and performance studies programs had the highest median completion rate. Languages, societies, and cultures programs had a median completion rate of 33%, the lowest recorded within the humanities field. Programs in two of the most populous disciplines, history and English language and literature, had rates of 42% and 46%. The span of IQRs among the disciplines was similarly broad. While the completion rates of German programs were clustered relatively tightly around the median (for an IQR of 20, the lowest of all the disciplines), typical completion rates for French programs, those with the highest IQR, ranged from 17% to 64%.

Figure II-17b, Full Size

---

Note

Humanities as Defined by the International Standard Classification of Education Humanities Religion and theology; Foreign languages and cultures: living or ‘dead’ languages and their literatures, area studies; Native languages: current or vernacular language and its literature; Other humanities: interpretation and translation, linguistics, comparative literature, history, archaeology, philosophy, ethics. Source: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 1997 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006), 42, http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/pdf/isced/ISCED_A.pdf. Back to Content