How many philosophy departments are there in the United States? How many people do they employ? How many students are there in philosophy courses each year? How many people major or minor in philosophy? How many are working on graduate degrees in philosophy?

These and other questions are answered in Philosophy Departments Today: Findings from the 2024 Department Survey, a new report from Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The report on philosophy departments is part of a larger study of fourteen humanities disciplines, The Academic Humanities Today.

Before we turn to the answers, I want to take a moment to thank Robert Townsend, Program Director for Humanities, Arts, and Culture at the Academy. He and his team at Humanities Indicators—Norman Bradburn, Carolyn Fuqua, Maysan Haydar, and Sara Mohr—produced this report, providing us with useful data about the humanities in higher education at a time when serious study of the humanities seems scorned by the broader culture and higher education is under attack from politicians.

The data was collected via the Humanities Department Survey (developed by Humanities Indicators) and administered between November 2023 and June 2024 to chairs of departments of American studies, anthropology, art history, classical studies, communication, English, history, languages and literatures other than English (LOTE), linguistics, musicology, philosophy, race/ ethnic studies, religion, and women’s/gender studies.  The response rate for philosophy departments was 49%. The counts, percentages, and averages in the report are estimates based on the survey data and, according to the report “a sample of all institutions of higher education reporting to the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System that they had conferred at least five degrees from academic year 2017–18 to 2021–22 in ‘Philosophy,’ ‘Logic,’ ‘Ethics,’ ‘Applied and Professional Ethics,’ ‘Philosophy, Other,’ or ‘Bioethics/Medical Ethics.'” Further information about the report’s methodology can be found in the full technical report.

Now to some of the findings (what follows quotes liberally from the Philosophy Department report, as well as the overall Academic Humanities report):

Departments & Programs

• 744 departments in the US award degrees in philosophy.
• Of these, 200 (27%) award graduate degrees, with 120 (16%) awarding PhDs.

Undergraduate Enrollments & Degrees

• Departments awarding degrees in philosophy had undergraduate course enrollments of 557,090, with an average enrollment of 749 per department. (These are duplicated enrollment figures, with students taking multiple courses in the discipline counted in every course.) The average is skewed upward by large programs, typically at research universities, which had significantly larger-than-average enrollments, as indicated by a median enrollment of only 347. This is the fourth-highest across the surveyed disciplines, after English, history, and languages other than English.
• On average, philosophy departments awarded 11 bachelor’s degrees per department in the 2022–23 academic year (with a median of 8 per department). These departments had an average of 26 juniors or seniors with a declared major in the discipline (and a median of 14).
• In 2012, philosophy departments bestowed a total of 9,850 bachelors degrees; in 2023, that number dropped to 8,170.
• In the 2022–23 academic year, philosophy departments awarded an average of 12 minors in the discipline (with a median of 8 per department) and 5 certificates or other microcredentials per department (with a median of 3). However, while 64% of philosophy departments reported awarding minors, only 15% awarded a certificate or other microcredential.

Graduate Enrollments & Degrees

• Degree-granting departments in philosophy had 9,450 enrollments in graduate courses in fall 2023, with an average of 47 (and a median of 60) enrollments per department with a graduate program.
• Approximately 4,910 students were working toward graduate degrees in philosophy. The average number of students pursuing advanced degrees in philosophy was 25 (with a median of 26) per department that granted such degrees.
• The 120 departments awarding PhDs admitted an average of 4.8 new doctoral students into their programs in fall 2023, for a total of 570 new doctoral students in the discipline.

Faculty Employment, Tenure, & Hiring

• Philosophy departments employed 8,620 full- and part-time faculty members in fall 2023, with an average of 12 faculty members per department (and a median of 8).
• Approximately 63% of philosophy faculty members either had tenure or were on the tenure track in fall 2023, compared to about 69% in 2012.
• About 34% of the departments had a faculty member come up for tenure during the previous two years.
• Averaging over these two years, 130 faculty were granted tenure per annum nationwide. None were denied tenure, though 50 left prior to a tenure decision.*
• While 31% of philosophy departments had made at least one new hire for the 2023–24 academic year (compared to 37% across all of the humanities departments), amounting to 410 new permanent faculty, the departments collectively had lost an average of 620 faculty per annum over the previous two years. Among the faculty who left, 58% had retired.
• Women constituted 23% of the chairs in philosophy departments in fall 2023 (the smallest share among the 14 disciplines surveyed), and 85% identified their race/ethnicity as white (one of the largest shares).

Teaching Loads

• Faculty members employed full-time with tenure or on the tenure track taught an average of 55 undergraduate students in fall 2023.
• Full-time faculty employed off the tenure track taught an average of 101 undergraduates in fall 2023.
• Faculty employed part-time taught an average of 73 undergraduate students during fall 2023.
• The average undergraduate enrollments for full-time tenure track and part-time faculty in philosophy were the highest among the 14 disciplines in the survey.

Connections Outside of the Humanities

• An average of 15% of philosophy faculty across departments co-teach for-credit courses with non-humanities faculty members (the third highest after religion at 23% and English at 16%)
• 1,750 philosophy faculty members taught for-credit courses outside their department (the fifth highest after English, languages other than English, history, and communication)
• An average of 13% of philosophy faculty across departments hold joint appointment in a non-humanities department (the sixth highest after linguistics, American studies, languages other than English, English, and  religion)
• 24% of philosophy departments offer minors “tied to non-humanities subjects” (tied at second highest with American Studies, after languages other than English)

Chairs’ Thoughts

• 13% of philosophy department chairs expected the number of tenure-track faculty in their departments to increase (a relatively small share among the disciplines surveyed), while 25% thought the number would shrink. (The remainder thought the most likely outcome would be no change or were not sure what would happen.) In contrast, 11% thought their nontenure-track faculty would increase, while 23% thought the number would shrink
• Approximately 43% of department chairs were optimistic about the future of philosophy at their institutions (a relatively small share among the 14 disciplines, but substantially larger than those for American studies, English, history, and languages and literatures other than English, disciplines in which only about a third of chairs expressed optimism). In comparison, 26% were pessimistic. (The remainder were either unsure or neither optimistic nor pessimistic.)
• The survey found that 19% of the chairs in philosophy were concerned about the academic freedom of faculty members in their department (a relatively small share among the 14 disciplines in the survey). Among those departments, the most common concern was threats to such freedom from boards of trustees (cited by 52% of chairs). The second most common concern was about academic administrations and students (each cited by 48%).

I encourage you to check out the complete Philosophy Departments report, as well as the humanities-wide summary and technical reports, for more information.

Discussion welcome.

* [this note was added a couple of hours after the original posting] This figure about tenure denials is raising some eyebrows. I’d remind readers that the data is based on a 49% response rate to the survey. In case your curious, below is a table with the humanities-wide data on “Tenure Activity over a Two-Year Period, 2021–22 & 2022–23 Academic Years”. As you can see, philosophy is not the only discipline that is reported as having zero tenure denials.