AAAS Philosophy Report


The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has released a second version of its Humanities Departmental Survey, the aim of which is to “fill critical gaps in our knowledge about the state of the humanities in higher education; specifically, about the number of faculty and students in the field and the role of humanities departments in their institutions and society” in the United States.

Philosophy was not covered in the first version, but it has been added for the current one, which is based on 2012-2013 data. The Philosophy Report can be found here (table of linked contents here). 

Here are some findings from the survey, which received a 74% response rate (168 of 227 departments):

• 69% of philosophy faculty are tenured or on the tenure-track.
• 5,800 philosophy faculty are men, 2,030 are women.
• 9,850 bachelor’s degrees in philosophy were completed in the 2011-12 year.
• There are approximately 20,500 current philosophy majors.
• There are approximately 4,650 philosophy graduate students, 3,770 of which are in PhD programs.
• The instructor of record for undergraduate courses, on average, is a tenured or tenure-track professor 73% of the time.
• 24% of philosophy departments offer at least some “fully online” philosophy courses.

UPDATE: Inside Higher Ed summarizes some of the general findings for the humanities.

Disputed Moral Issues - Mark Timmons - Oxford University Press
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Jan
Jan
9 years ago

A shame they don’t include a gender breakdown by rank and tenure/tenure-track status, given that they collected data on each separately. That would have been interesting.

DC
DC
9 years ago

“• 69% of philosophy faculty are tenured or on the tenure-track.
• 5,800 philosophy faculty are men, 2,030 are women.
• There are approximately 4,650 philosophy graduate students, 3,770 of which are in PhD programs.”

Wow. That’s only 5403 current tenured or tenure-track positions filled now, with 3,770 PhD students in the pipeline?

Derek Bowman
9 years ago

To be clear, this report only covers 4-year institutions. So, even apart from worries about self-selection and self-reporting, it’s likely that the actual percentage of tenure-track faculty for the entire field is lower, given the heavy reliance on adjuncts in community colleges.

observer
observer
9 years ago

35% philosophy faculty are women. In 2012 the proportion of women who received doctorates in philosophy was 26.8% (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/data_table.cfm).

The form of discrimination that is known as affirmative action seems to work.

RJ
RJ
Reply to  observer
9 years ago

I hope the discipline learns to discriminate against those who can’t do math.

keaswaran
keaswaran
Reply to  observer
9 years ago

The number of philosophy faculty who are women is 35% of the number who are men, not of the total number. Of the total number, my calculations give me 26%.