Number of Ph.D.s in humanities vs. hard sciences?
April 28, 2008 8:19 AM   Subscribe

Do American institutions of higher education collectively grant more doctorates annually in the arts and humanities than in the "hard" sciences (that is, biology, chemistry, physics, and for this discussion, mathematics)?

For purposes of this discussion, fields will be defined as they are in this study (which doesn't exactly give me the information I need):

Arts and Humanities: Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, English Language and Literature, French Language and Literature, German Language and Literature, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature.

Biological Sciences: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Cell and Developmental Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Molecular and General Genetics; Neurosciences; Pharmacology; Physiology.

Physical Sciences and Mathematics: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Geosciences, Mathematics, Oceanography, Physics, Statistics and Biostatistics.


Note that I'm excluding engineering and social/behavioral sciences here.

Finally, numbers will be more helpful here than hearsay. This question came out of a conversation this weekend between myself (I have an English Ph.D.) and a biology grad student, and while I believe that far more humanities Ph.D.s than science Ph.D.s are minted each year, she believes the reverse is true. So since at least one of us is operating on hearsay, I need hard numbers to settle this, if possible. But this morning my Google-fu is weak. Help, AskMe.
posted by Prospero to Education (6 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Sounds like you might be looking for the Survey of Earned Doctorates.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:33 AM on April 28, 2008


Yeah, looks like you're going to have to eat some crow. Table 5 in the report that Artie (above) linked to indicates that there were 9,683 life sciences doctorates awarded in 2006, 7,461 physical sciences doctorates, and only 5,576 humanities doctorates. In other words, over three times as many science doctorates as humanities doctorates were awarded in 2006. This preponderance of scientists seems to hold back as far back as 1976, too, so it's not exactly a recent phenomenon.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:48 AM on April 28, 2008


Both maybe? I hear only one out of six PhD students who start a humanities program finishes it. Almost everyone who starts a science program finishes.

You pay them when studying the humanities, but science programs pay you. So humanities has an incentive to over admit while sciences have more reason to take care.

p.s. The AMS used to claim that there were about 1000 math PhDs per year and about 500 opennings for faculty positions and postdocs.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:49 AM on April 28, 2008


You pay them when studying the humanities, but science programs pay you. So humanities has an incentive to over admit while sciences have more reason to take care.

That very much depends on the school. There are many schools in which humanities students are paid, yet there still students drop out.
posted by ob at 9:03 AM on April 28, 2008


Some good data about math is here (.pdf file, from the AMS.) In 2005-06, U.S. universities awared 1311 Ph.D.'s in math -- 97% were employed one year out, about three-quarters in academic jobs.
posted by escabeche at 9:03 AM on April 28, 2008


I would agree that at the outset it would seem like there would be more people getting PhD's in the humanities because it is not as technical of a field as the sciences. However, the issues of employability, money and time come into play. In fields like chemistry, if you want to do R&D at a technical level and not just be a lab lackey for the rest of your life, you have to go on to get a PhD. There are people who do it because they want to be a college professor, and also many people in the humanities go on for this reason. However, their are far more people in the technical sciences who get a PhD to go into industrial or government research labs. So it makes sense to me that more people are in science PhD programs.

I would also disagree with jeffburdges statement that almost everyone who starts a PhD in the sciences finishes it. Rates of attrition are still quite high (anecdotally, about 15-20% in my program) of people who either get a masters, switch programs, or drop out entirely. There is still a hefty weed-out system of courses and written and oral exams that some people just can't hack. Also heresay -- I have heard of large programs that allow for huge incoming classes in order to get enough TAs for undergraduate courses and then weed them out later in courses or by not having enough room in research groups to allow them to join.
posted by sararah at 1:18 PM on April 28, 2008


« Older Where to stay in Barcelona?   |   Tick, Tally, and Cull in Bloglines Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.