by Jon Lackman | 2 March 2010 | Career
The Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a “new cross-disciplinary survey of humanities departments”:
The teaching work force in the humanities is tilting more and more toward the nontenured … Survey results indicate that a low turnover rate among faculty members, combined with hiring freezes at many institutions, mean fewer academic career opportunities for graduate students … And now for the good news: The great majority of the humanities departments surveyed—87 percent—said that their discipline was included in the core requirements at their college or university. The survey collected numbers on undergraduate concentrations and found that the enduring appeal of the humanities translates into minors as well as majors.
According to the survey’s report on art history departments (pdf),
The 329 departments that award a degree in Art History employ about 2,830 faculty members … Overall, about 60% of the faculty members … are women, about three-fourths are employed in a full-time position, and 70% are either tenured or in a tenure-track position.
These 329 departments award about 5,400 bachelor’s degrees in art history each year. Another 4,030 will graduate with an art-history minor. There are 3,920 graduate students in art history. Upper-division undergraduate course sections average 24.8 students per section; graduate sections average 7.1 students. Every year, about 80 tenure-track professors receive tenure, while 35 are denied or leave prior to coming up for tenure.
