Indicators II-15,
Time Spent in Graduate School, and II-16,
Paying for Graduate School, reveal that humanities graduate students
make significant investments of time and money in their education. The data presented
in this section show that this high level of investment goes hand in hand with some
of the highest postgraduation employment rates in the academic world, although growing
numbers of new humanities Ph.D.’s are pursuing postdoctoral study in lieu of formal
employment. At present, this is all that can be reliably said about the career trajectories
of humanities doctoral graduates. In contrast to the sciences and engineering, the
humanities have no data collection program that follows Ph.D.’s through their working
lives. Such data as do exist must be drawn from discontinued sources, such as the
Survey of Humanities Doctorates, funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) from 1977 to 1995, or from sources that are not specifically concerned with
humanities Ph.D.’s, such as the
Survey of Earned Doctorates
(SED) sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and five other federal
government agencies, including the NEH.
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Indicator III-6
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Job Status of Humanities Ph.D.’s at Time of Graduation
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Although much concern about the fate of humanities Ph.D.’s has focused on their
ability to use their degrees to enter the working world, data on this topic are
limited. The best source of information on the immediate plans of humanities Ph.D.
holders at the time of their graduation is the SED, which has collected data on
the educational histories, funding sources, and postgraduation plans of a large
sample of new recipients of research doctorates from U.S. educational institutions
for every academic year since 1958. The data presented here describe trends between
1988 and 2008.
The SED data show that the percentage of
humanities Ph.D.’s leaving the university with a firm job commitment (in
academe or another sector) declined over the course of the 1990s. By 2003, the share
of graduates with such commitments had increased, but 2008 saw another slight decline,
to 56% (Figure III-6). However, the employment rate for new humanities Ph.D.’s
was higher than that for new natural sciences and social sciences degree holders
and, in most years, for engineering Ph.D.’s as well.
Postdoctoral study is far more common in the sciences and engineering than in the
humanities. In 2008, for example, 43% of life sciences Ph.D.’s had firm commitments
for postdoctoral study, compared to 9% in the humanities. The latter figure, however,
is almost twice as great as it was in 1988, reflecting small but consistent increases
beginning in the late 1990s. But even with this increase, when postdoctoral study
is considered, a greater percentage of science and engineering Ph.D.’s leave their
graduate programs with firm engagements than do their counterparts in the humanities.
The greater prevalence of postdoctoral study among sciences and engineering Ph.D.’s
is also reflected in the fact that humanities Ph.D.’s were much likelier to have
firm commitments for academic employment (full- and part-time faculty and administrative
jobs) than their counterparts in engineering and the sciences. In 1988, 48% of humanities
graduates (the bulk of those humanities graduates reporting employment) reported
that they would be taking such jobs. Except in the late 1990s, when the share of
academic commitments dipped several percentage points, this level of academic employment
held throughout the decades examined here. In contrast, the academic employment
rate for Ph.D.’s in the social sciences—the scientific field with the greatest proportion
of graduates entering such employment—was in the vicinity of 30% over the course
of the examined decades. In 1988, the likelihood that an engineering, life sciences,
or physical sciences Ph.D. would immediately take an academic position after graduate
school was approximately one-third of that for humanities Ph.D.’s. Twenty years
later, the likelihood was less than one-fifth of that for new humanities doctorate
holders.
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Indicator III-7
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Occupations of Humanities Ph.D.’s
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Since 1975, the
Survey of Doctorate Recipients
(SDR) overseen by the NSF has yielded rich data on the occupational paths of Ph.D.
recipients. Fielded every two years, the survey is longitudinal in nature, following
recipients of doctorates from U.S. institutions until age 76. Until the mid-1990s,
the SDR included a survey of humanities doctorate recipients, known as the Survey
of Humanities Doctorates (SHD) and funded by the NEH. In 1996, however, the NEH
discontinued its support for the SDR, which thereafter tracked only science and
engineering Ph.D.’s.
Figure III-7 presents data from the final administration of the SHD, which
provides the most current national data that permit a detailed analysis of the occupational
trajectories of humanities Ph.D.’s. In 1995, regardless of the number of years since
receipt of the doctorate, the majority of employed humanities Ph.D.’s were teaching
at the postsecondary level as their principal jobs. For all cohorts of Ph.D. recipients,
with the exception of those who had received their degrees five or fewer years earlier,
a substantial minority also made their way into management or administrative positions.
Approximately 5% of each cohort had jobs as artists, writers, or mass media specialists.
There were, however, differences among cohorts. Thus, whereas just over 73% of those
who had their doctorates five years or less held faculty jobs in postsecondary institutions,
this percentage was lower for each of the next two cohort groups and amounted to
approximately 61% for those who held Ph.D.’s for 6–15 years and 54% for those with
doctorates for 16–25 years. This finding raises the question of whether the observed
differential is attributable to generational differences in the desire or ability
of Ph.D.’s to obtain faculty positions or to a tendency for humanities Ph.D.’s to
leave academic employment as they age.
In the absence of longitudinal data that could be used to chart the subsequent career
paths of these cohorts of humanities doctorate recipients, answering these questions
is not possible, that is, it is not possible to distinguish cohort effects, which
involve generational differences, from age effects, which have to do with what occurs
over the life course for all cohorts (see Indicator V-3, Book Reading, in which the
differences between these two types of effects are explained in greater detail and
the way in which longitudinal data make it possible to distinguish between them
is demonstrated). However, the
National Survey of College Graduates
conducted by the NSF does supply cross-sectional data that can shed some light on
these important issues.
Because the NSF’s interest is in the career paths of those with undergraduate degrees
in science and engineering, humanities Ph.D.’s are not the primary focus of the
survey. But as a means of identifying people with such science and engineering degrees,
the NSF gathers detailed educational and occupational information from a sample
of approximately 200,000 individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those who
indicated in their decennial census forms that they had completed at least an undergraduate
degree. This process, conducted once a decade, generates a wealth of data on holders
of nonscience degrees, both undergraduate and advanced, which the NSF does not analyze
itself but does make available to researchers and the general public. Subsequent
edition of the Humanities Indicators will include analyses of these data from 1993
and 2003.
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Indicator III-8
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Career Paths for Specific Disciplines
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Drawing on the SHD (for more information on this discontinued data collection program,
see Indicator III-7,
Occupations of Humanities Ph.D.’s), the figures in this indicator depict
the fields of employment of Ph.D.’s in selected humanities disciplines (see Figure
III-8a for Music, Figure III-8b for Philosophy, Figure III-8c
for Classics, Figure III-8d for English, Figure III-8e for Modern
Languages and Literatures, Figure III-8f for History, and Figure III-8g
for Art History). The distributions are presented in separate figures to allow for
the fact that in certain disciplines, substantial numbers of Ph.D.’s are employed
in professions that are uniquely associated with those disciplines; in the case
of art history, for example, 14.5% of Ph.D.’s were employed as curators. Apart from
such distinctions, each discipline for which data are presented had a majority of
doctoral recipients who were employed as postsecondary faculty in 1995. This majority
was largest for philosophy and foreign languages (approximately 64% in both cases)
and smallest for history and art history (58% and 56%).
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