• In 2018, the share of all master’s and professional degrees awarded to students in the humanities fell to 3.0%, the lowest level recorded in the three decades for which data are available (Indicator II-21a).1 Humanities master’s degrees awarded each year since the late 1980s have constituted no more than 5% of all degrees awarded at the master’s and professional degree levels, with the high-water mark for the field occurring in 1993.
• At the doctoral level, the percentage of degrees awarded in the humanities fell to its lowest level on record in 2018 (7.6%), from a high of 11.1% in 2000 (Indicator II-21b). The percentage of doctoral degrees awarded annually in the humanities from the late 1980s to 2018 has been consistently at least double the share conferred at the master’s level.
• Completions in a subset of humanities disciplines—English language and literature, history, languages and literatures other than English (including linguistics and classics), and philosophy (designated “Historical Categories” in the graphs)—can be traced back to 1948, providing a longer-term view of the field. These data reveal that graduate humanities programs experienced a substantial loss in their share of degree completions over the 1970s and 1980s, as the number of advanced degrees awarded in the historical categories declined. While the absolute number of advanced degrees conferred in the humanities did rise from its mid-1980s low, the number of advanced degrees awarded in other fields increased more quickly. As a result, the field’s share of all master’s and doctoral degrees remained well below the record levels observed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
• From the early 1990s (the height of the humanities’ recovery from the 1980s slump) to 2018, the share of all master’s and professional degrees awarded in the historical categories of humanities degrees shrank by almost half. At the doctoral level, however, the share increased fairly steadily in the 1990s and then decreased through 2007. Despite upticks in several subsequent years, as of 2018 the field’s share of PhD completions was less than half of its 1973 high.
• Turning from the “historical categories” back to the full complement of humanities disciplines, the share of all master’s and professional degrees awarded in the humanities declined gradually from the early 1990s on, decreasing from the 1993 high of 5.0% to 3.0% in 2018 (Indicator II-21c). Education and law also experienced a substantial loss of share over this time period. In contrast, the share of degrees conferred on graduates from the fields of engineering, health/medical sciences, and natural sciences grew considerably.
• While the share of all doctoral degrees that were granted in the humanities decreased from a high of 11.1% in 2000 to 7.9% in 2018, engineering and the health/medical sciences experienced notable increases in share (Indicator II-21d).2

Endnotes

• 1For an explanation of the types of degrees treated by the Humanities Indicators as professional degrees, please see the Note on the Definition of Advanced Degrees.
• 2The appearance of a dramatic shrinkage in 2010 in the share of all doctorates that went to students in the health and medical sciences is attributable to a change made by the National Center for Education Statistics in the way it asks institutions to classify doctorates. Please see the “About the Data” information associated with this indicator for details. (See also the Note on the Definition of Advanced Degrees for a description of this shift and the steps the Humanities Indicators has taken to help ensure comparability of the advanced degree counts it provides for different years.)