New Data: “The Troubled Academic Job Market for Humanities” (U.S.)

New data (June 2016 update) released today by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Indicators project.
Patterns in Faculty Employment

• The number of humanities faculty plateaued in recent years, while the number in the health field continued to grow rapidly.

• Approximately 157,540 humanities faculty members were employed in two- and four-year colleges.

• Humanities faculty members made up a slightly smaller share of faculty members at four-year colleges than at two-year institutions in 2015

• From 2011 to 2015, the share of two-year college faculty in the fine arts increased by 8%, while education and business lost share.

Direct to Data: Number of Faculty Members in Humanities and Other Fields
Patterns in Specific Humanities Disciplines

• From 2013 to 2015, almost every humanities discipline experienced either minimal growth or a slight decline in its number of faculty members.

• Most humanities faculty are employed inEnglish language and literatures (with almost two-thirds of humanities faculty in two-year colleges employed in the discipline).

• From 1999 to 2015, history experienced the lowest level of faculty growth in the humanities, but still increased 40%.

• The greatest percentage increase in faculty occurred in the category of area, ethnic, and cultural studies (albeit from relatively low levels).

• The number of faculty employed to teach languages other than English in two-year colleges increased 8% from 2013 to 2015.

Direct to Data: Number of Faculty Members in Humanities Disciplines
See Also: List of all Humanities Indicators Made Available by Project

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