• From 1997 to 2022, the share of humanities master’s degrees awarded to students from minoritized racial/ethnic groups grew from 12.1% to 28.7%—the largest share on record (Indicator II-25a).1 Throughout this time period, the share of humanities degrees earned by minoritized students was smaller than the share for master’s and professional degrees generally, though the gap has narrowed over time. In 1997, a humanities master’s degree was 24% less likely than a master’s degree generally to be awarded to a minoritized student. By 2022, the difference had shrunk to 10%. 
• Among all the fields of study, the humanities had one of the largest shares of master’s and professional degree recipients identifying as white permanent residents of the United States in 2022, with 57.2% in this category (Indicator II-25b). The humanities field was second only to education (61.6%), and its share was six percentage points larger than the share for all academic fields combined.
• In 2022, the share of master’s degrees in the humanities awarded to African American students was somewhat smaller than the share of master’s degrees generally (8.1% versus 10.1%), whereas the share of the field’s degrees awarded to Hispanic graduates was slightly larger (12.5% versus 11.1%).
• The humanities awarded a comparatively small share of its master’s degrees to international students residing in the United States on temporary visas. Just 9.6% of humanities students in 2022 were identified as temporary residents, more than two percentage points below the share for all fields combined (and less than half the share among those earning doctoral degrees in the field). This share was smaller than in all other fields except education and the health and medical sciences (where the shares were smaller than 3%).
• In 2022, the humanities awarded 3.8% of its master’s degrees to students of Asian descent. This was a smaller share than in all other fields except education and approximately half the percentage for master’s and professional degree recipients generally.
• From 1997 to 2022, the share of humanities master’s degrees awarded to Hispanic/Latino students nearly tripled, rising from 4.2% in 1997 to 12.5% in 2022—the largest share on record (Indicator II-25c). And the share of master’s degrees in the humanities earned by students identifying as African American/Black nearly doubled, growing from 4.1% in 1997 to 8.1% in 2022, which was also the largest share on record.
• In contrast to the substantial increase in the share of doctoral degrees in the humanities that were earned by students on temporary visa from 1997 to 2022, the share among those earning master’s degrees in the field was virtually the same 2022 as it had been 25 years earlier (9.5% compared to 9.3%).
• Among the humanities disciplines, cultural, ethnic, and gender studies was the most likely to award a master’s degree to a member of a minoritized racial/ethnic group—and by a wide margin (Indicator II-25d). In 2022, 56% of the students earning master’s degrees in the discipline were members of a minoritized group. Communication and area studies were the next likeliest, with each field awarding approximately 35% of their degrees to these students. In almost every humanities discipline examined here, the share of master’s degrees awarded to members of minoritized racial/ethnic groups at least doubled from 1997 to 2022. The smallest increase was found in comparative literature, where the share increased by 43%. The largest change was in philosophy, where the share increased 209% (from 8.2% to 25.4%). 
• Despite the recent growth in the share of minoritized students earning master’s degrees in the humanities, the field represented a declining share of the degrees being awarded to those students as of 2022 (Indicator II-25e). The humanities accounted for 3.4% of the master’s degrees awarded to minoritized students in 1997 and gradually fell to 2.4% in 2022.

Endnotes

• 1

  Includes students who are citizens or permanent residents and self-identify as American Indian/Alaska Native only (non-Hispanic), African American/Black only (non-Hispanic), Asian only (non-Hispanic), Hispanic or Latino (any race), Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander only (non-Hispanic), or two or more races (non-Hispanic). These—along with “White only (non-Hispanic),” “U.S. Nonresident,” and “Unknown” (for students who decline to answer)—are the categories the National Center for Education Statistics requires institutions to use when reporting students’ race/identity. For information on how institutions collect data on race/ethnicity from students and assign them to these categories, see https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/report-your-data/race-ethnicity-collecting-data-for-reporting-purposes.