More Minorities Are Earning Degrees in Philosophy
The percentage of bachelor’s degrees in philosophy awarded to members of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States has more than doubled since the turn of the century, as has the percentage of doctoral degrees in philosophy, according to reports from Humanities Indicators.
According their report, “Racial/Ethnic Distribution of Bachelor’s Degrees in the Humanities,” the share of bachelor’s degrees in philosophy awarded to members of minority racial and ethnic groups in the US has grown from 15.8% in 2000 to 36% in 2022.
Source: Humanities Indicators
The share of doctoral degrees earned by members of minority racial and ethnic groups in the US has increased from 7.6% in 2000 to 18.7% in 2022, according to “Racial/Ethnic Representation Among Doctoral Degree Recipients in the Humanities.“
Source: Humanities Indicators
Both reports contain other information about demographic trends in humanities degrees.
Humanities Indicators is an ongoing project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Unless I’m missing something, this data is mostly about general changes in minority representation at bachelors level.
Consider: The percentage of bachelors’ degrees, in total, awarded to minoritized racial/ethnic groups increased from ~20% in 1997 to ~38% in 2023 (source: Justin’s link) – in other words, it pretty much doubled. Over the same period, the percentage of humanities degrees awarded to minoritized students has slightly more than doubled. So nearly all the change is just attributable to the general increase in minoritized students’ representation in higher education over that period.
If you look in more detail at the fraction of students doing humanities degrees:
So the percentages of non-minoritized and minoritized students doing humanities degrees are now pretty much equal. In 1997, they were about 10% different, and the closing of that gap explains the rest of the percentage increase. Both minoritized and non-minoritized students have become less likely to do humanities degrees over the 1997-2023 period, but minoritized students have decreased slightly more slowly, from a slightly lower starting point.
When I saw the ‘all humanities’ line in the second set of graphs, I suspected something like this might be going on. Thanks for digging into it further.