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Indicator III-9
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Number of Humanities Faculty
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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".
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See the
Note on the Definition of Faculty and on the Classification of Disciplines
and the
Note on Postsecondary Faculty Employment Data Sources.
Over the last several years, while the number of doctoral degree completions in the humanities tended to decline, the number of full- and part-time faculty teaching the humanities increased. As Figure III-9a indicates, growth was modest between 1999 and 2001 but then accelerated over the next four years. By 2006, the number of humanities faculty had increased 24% from its 1999 level. At the same time, however, the faculties of several other fields grew even more quickly, with the health sciences in particular seeing a 41% increase. Consequently, although the number of humanities faculty grew, the proportion of all faculty who taught humanities held at approximately 14% throughout the period (Figure III-9b).
Figure III-9c charts the number of faculty in selected humanities disciplines at the postsecondary level. In any given year between 1999 and 2006, English language and literature had the greatest number of faculty, and more than twice that of foreign languages and literatures, which consistently had the next highest number. For most fields, the beginning of the period, 1999–2001, was one of stability in the number of faculty. Thereafter, while faculty numbers in English, foreign languages and literatures, and history increased fairly steadily through 2006, growth in philosophy and religion and in area, ethnic, and cultural studies ceased in 2005, and by the following year the number of faculty teaching in these disciplines had declined.
Note on the Definition of Faculty and on the Classification of Disciplines
Faculty
For the purposes of the Humanities Indicators, a faculty member is defined as an employee of a two-year or four-year
college or a university who teaches credit-earning courses and who may also perform research activities. Faculty thus
include not only individuals who have faculty status in their institutions but also those who are classified as
instructional staff by their employers. Faculty exclude those individuals whose duties are purely research oriented
(even though such individuals may be classified as faculty by their institutions).
Classification of Academic Disciplines
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the collector of the data on which the first indicator in this section
is based (III-9, Number of Humanities Faculty)
sorts postsecondary faculty by academic discipline, using a scheme
that includes six humanities-related categories. Five of these have been combined by the Humanities Indicators for
the purposes of estimating humanities faculty employment. They include:
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English Language and Literature
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Foreign Languages and Literatures
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History
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Philosophy and Religion
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Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies
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The sixth BLS category, Arts, Drama, and Music, does not distinguish between faculty who teach the academic study of
the arts (treated by the Humanities Indicators as a humanities activity) and those who teach studio and performing arts.
Consequently, faculty teaching the history and criticism of the fine arts and film are not included in the estimate of the
number of humanities faculty.
The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), the source of the data for the other indicators in this section,
conceptualizes the humanities somewhat more narrowly than does the Humanities Indicators, including only those individuals
teaching English, foreign languages, history, philosophy, and religion. Additionally, the NSOPF treats computer science as a natural science (although the
Humanities Indicators considers this discipline to be part of the engineering field and classifies it as such for the
purposes of the other indicators).
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Note on Postsecondary Faculty Employment Data Sources
The BLS' Occupational Employment Statistics program, from which the data presented
as part of Indicator III-9 are drawn, is not the only source of high-quality employment
data for postsecondary humanities faculty.
See the
Data from both the National Survey of College Graduates
(NSCG),
which is administered by the National Science Foundation, and the
National Center for Education Statistics' National Study of Postsecondary Faculty
(NSOPF) can be used to generate estimates of the total
number of humanities teaching jobs on the nation's college and university campuses. Data
from BLS are presented here because they are collected annually (rather than every 5-10
years in the case of the NSCG and NSOPF) and thus allow the Indicators to closely track
faculty employment trends.
However, considerable differences between the employment estimates yielded by these
different datasets has prompted Humanities Indicators staff to initiate a thorough
assessment of the relative merits of these three datasets as a source of humanities faculty
employment estimates. The findings of this investigation will determine the data source
on which any future versions of this indicator will be based. (For more on the value of
the NSOPF and NSCG in estimating the size and attributes of the postsecondary
humanities teaching corps, see David Laurence's essay, "The Humanities Workforce").
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