Data
CategoryPhilosophy PhD Program Ratings by Former Students, Placement Data, and Diversity Profiles
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project aimed at gathering placement and other data about graduate programs in philosophy, has created some tables presenting some of the information they’ve obtained. (more…)
Slight Increase in Philosophy PhDs Awarded, and other Humanities Data
The Humanities Indicators project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has released new data regarding graduate degree completion in the humanities, number of jobs advertised per discipline, and the demographics of humanities graduate students. (more…)
The Favorites, the Faked, the Overrated, the Overused, Etc.
Philosophers, please take a minute to complete a brief anonymous survey that asks you questions about things like your favorite thought experiment, which philosopher is overrated, which famous philosophical work you haven’t read, and the like. (more…)
Majority Of Republicans Say Higher Education Has “Negative Effect” On The Country
The Pew Research Center yesterday published the results of a study showing that “a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year. By contrast, most Democrats and Democratic leaners (72%) say colleges and universities have a positive effect, which i..
Trend: Fewer Philosophy Majors
The number of philosophy majors in the United States declined in the years leading up to 2015, part of a general decline in the number of humanities majors. (more…)
What Kinds of Universities Lack Philosophy Departments? Some Data (guest post by Eric Schwitzgebel)
The following is a guest post* by Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California, Riverside) that gathers data about the kinds of colleges and universities in the United States that have or lack philosophy departments and a philosophy major program. A version of this post was originally published at his blog, The Splintered Mind.
Reconsidering Implicit Bias
At the time of this post, bibliographic philosophy database PhilPapers has 1,975,719 entries. Of these, only 74 works seem to be about “implicit bias”—subconscious bias concerning, for example, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexuality. One might think, then, that the idea of implicit bias hasn’t been of much importance in philosophy. Yet, while there is n..
Philosophy Placement Data: An Update on APDA
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and headed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), aims “to make information on academic job placement useful to prospective graduate students in philosophy.” The project has just been updated to include new data, which Professor Jennings describes in a post ..
Data on Philosophy Jobs Advertised Recently
Two sources of information appear to present slightly different figures regarding the number of job openings advertised in philosophy through the American Philosophical Association (APA) and PhilJobs—that is, through PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers—in recent years. (See update)
According to data presented by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (via Robert..
PhD Programs in Philosophy with the most Women Graduates
The philosophy doctoral programs at the University of Memphis, the California Institute of Integral Studies, the University of Oregon, the University of New Mexico, the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the only ones in the United States which have graduated more women than men during the 2004-2014 period, accord..
The Personality of Philosophy Majors
Psychologist Anna Vedel (Aarhus University) writes: “The choice of education is perhaps the first highly important decision that young people have to make for themselves in the developed world. Each education paves the way for certain vocational paths, and the choice has a lasting impact on the young adult’s life.” It might be useful, then, to see what we can learn ..
Philosophy Degrees: How Many Are Awarded, And To Whom?
Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has released new degree-specific data on various humanities subjects, including philosophy. Here are some of the findings. All data and images below are from the Humanities Indicators site. (more…)
Data on PhDs Across the Disciplines
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released a new edition of its Survey of Earned Doctorates, according Inside Higher Ed, including data through 2014. According to the survey, 54,070 PhDs were bestowed in 2014,with 5,486 of them in humanities fields. Of those, only 54.3% had “job or post-doc commitments.” For 2004, these figures were 5,210 and 63.4%, respecti..
Faculty Salary Report
A large determinant in how much faculty earn is the discipline in which they teach, according to a report at Inside Higher Ed on the salaries of tenured and tenure-track faculty at four-year colleges and universities. The best-paying fields for full professors are law, business, and engineering, with humanities fields towards the low end. The article notes:
The l..
Slight Decline in Number of Philosophy PhDs
451 PhDs in philosophy were awarded in the United States in 2014, marking a modest decrease from the 494 of the previous year. Here are the numbers for the period from 2004-2014:
These numbers are from the U.S. federal government’s Survey of Earned Doctorates. (Thanks to Robert Townsend, Director of the Washington Office of the American Academy of Arts & Scie..
Data on the Humanities
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has published its Humanities Indicators report for the United States, “The State of the Humanities: Higher Education 2015.” Among its findings:
- Humanities represent a little more than 10% of all Bachelor’s degrees, slightly more than 8% of all doctoral degrees, and just under 4% of all masters degrees.
- The number of stu..
For the Money
Graduates with philosophy degrees have “higher earnings potential than many other arts and humanities-related fields,” said TheRichest. Payscale reports midcareer median salaries are $84,000 for your modern day Kant or Descartes. Why? Well, let’s be logical. Which is exactly what philosophy programs require of students … logic. Thinking is hard, it requires analysis..
UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) & Philosophy
A few days ago, the results from the UK government’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise were released. I suspect that a lot of non-UK readers are largely unfamiliar with the REF, so first some basics:
The REF is used by the government to assess the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. It replaced the earlier Research Assesment E..
Earnings and Occupations of Humanities Undergrads
Data about the earnings, occupations, and unemployment of humanities undergraduates (as of 2013) is featured in a new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robert Townsend, director of the organization’s Washington office, writes:
As usual, the main narrative is about the humanities as a whole—where we can at least demonstrate that overall earn..
“Sleeping Beauty” Papers in Philosophy (updated)
“Sleeping Beauty” papers “lie dormant for years before experiencing a sudden spike in citations as they are discovered and recognized as important.” A recent article in Nature discussed scientific papers that have slumbered for decades, as well as a way of assigning a “beauty coefficient” to papers.
The coefficient, B, is “a value based on the number of citations..
Minorities in Philosophy: Data Visualized
Data from 860 philosophers who identified themselves on the UPDirectory (previously) as belonging to minority demographic groups has been analyzed and depicted in various graphs and diagrams by Andrew Higgins, a recent graduate of University of Illinois, specializing in metaphysics and digital humanities, and currently working at Heartland Community College.
The..
Philosophy: Top Paid Humanities Major of 2016
Philosophy majors are predicted to have higher average starting salaries than graduates in any other humanities major, reports the National Association of Colleges and Employers in its 2016 Salary Survey:
Philosophy majors are projected to earn an average starting salary of $49,000 (See Figure 1). This is up from last year, when projected salaries for philosophy ..
Philosophy Data from the Open Syllabus Project (Guest Post by Andrew Higgins)
The following is a guest post* from Andrew Higgins, who recently received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He spent some time combing through data at the Open Syllabus Project (previously) and in the post presents some information that should be of interest to fellow philosophers. Thanks, Dr. Higgins!
Philosophy Data from..
Kant + Data = Beautiful Utility? (updated)
Minerva is “a web tool for supporting philosophical historiography research.” It’s the master’s thesis project of Valerio Pellegrini, and was designed by him in conjunction with “a team of philosophical historians from the University of Milan” and the Density Design Research Lab. It was initially designed for examining the work of Immanuel Kant, but the idea is to e..
Academic Employment Numbers: A Closer Look
Articles about employment in higher education sometimes mention that 75% of today’s college instructors are adjuncts. That number—or at least the idea that there are very many adjuncts employed by universities—seems to inform various discussions about academic training and employment (such as whether there are too many philosophy PhDs — here and here, for examp..
Philosophy Placement Data Analysis Project
A new research project to collect and analyze job placement data in academic philosophy, funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA), is underway. The project is currently at the information gathering stage, with a target completion date of August 31st, 2015. The final results will be posted at placementdata.com.
The task is being carried out by Carolyn ..