Students

• Among folklore departments that were granting degrees in 2012, total enrollment in undergraduate courses was 5,880 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 490.1 per department).2
• On average, folklore departments awarded six bachelor’s degrees per department in the 2016–17 academic year. Students also completed an average of 12.3 minors per department.
• Total enrollment in graduate-level folklore courses was 215 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 17.9 per department). The average number of students pursuing an advanced degree in folklore was six per department that granted such degrees.

Faculty

• Folklore departments employed 50 full- or part-time faculty members in fall 2017, with an average of 4.1 faculty members per department. Seventy-eight percent of these faculty were either tenured or on the tenure track, and 9% were employed part-time.
• Thirty-five percent of folklore departments hired a new permanent faculty member for the start of the 2017–18 academic year, and 20% of the departments had a faculty member come up for tenure in the previous two years.
• Women constituted 59% of the faculty members in folklore departments in fall 2017. Fifty-seven percent of tenured faculty members were women, compared to 71% of faculty members on the tenure track and 55% of those off the tenure track.

Supporting Student Careers

• Forty-two percent of folklore departments rated the career services programs at their college or university “good” or “very good” for their students. None of them rated the services “poor” or “very poor.”

Endnotes

• 2Students who enrolled in more than one course in the discipline are counted in each course in which they enrolled. The same is true for the graduate course enrollment values given below. Medians for all “per department” quantities mentioned in this section are available in the corresponding data tables (please see the Appendix, Part B).