The Humanities Departmental Survey is a collaborative effort to collect and analyze information from humanities departments across several academic disciplines. Project participants, including representatives from national humanities organizations and disciplinary associations such as the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association, developed a survey instrument designed to bring consistency to already-existing data collection efforts in the humanities. The long-term goal is to create original multidisciplinary trend data that can be used to produce indicators of the state of the humanities in higher education.
The survey was administered during the 2007-2008 academic year to a national sample of approximately 1,400 departments in four-year colleges and universities. The disciplines surveyed are: art history, English, foreign languages, history, the history of science, linguistics, and religion. The survey gathered a wide variety of data for each discipline, including the number and nature of faculty; the distribution of teaching loads; the number of undergraduate majors and minors; and other aspects of the student experience.
The data collected via the survey are analyzed in a report prepared by the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, which served as data host for the project. Two related essays provide additional background and discussion of the findings. The report and essays can be viewed and/or downloaded free of charge using the links to the right.
The Humanities Departmental Survey received funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Teagle Foundation.
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