Students

• Among LLE departments that were granting degrees in 2007, total enrollment in undergraduate courses was 1,035,650 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 848.2 per department).2Appendix, Part B).
• On average, LLE departments awarded 21.5 bachelor’s degrees per department in the 2016–17 academic year. Students also completed an average of 35.3 minors per department.
• Total enrollment in graduate-level LLE courses was 74,200 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 60.8 per department). The average number of students pursuing an advanced degree in LLE was 26.3 per department that granted such degrees (a statistically significant decline from 2012).
• Excluding LLE and classical studies departments, 76% of the doctoral-degree-granting programs in the disciplines surveyed had a language requirement.

Faculty

• LLE departments employed 19,160 full- and part-time faculty members in fall 2017, with an average of 15.7 faculty members per department. Just over half of these faculty were either tenured or on the tenure track, and 26% were employed part-time.
• Forty-seven percent of LLE departments hired a new permanent faculty member for the start of the 2017–18 academic year, and 36% of the departments had a faculty member come up for tenure in the previous two years.
• Women constituted 63% of the faculty members in LLE departments in fall 2017, one of the largest shares among disciplines in the survey outside of women and gender studies. Fifty-five percent of tenured faculty members were women, compared to 57% of faculty members on the tenure track and 70% of those off the tenure track.
• While all LLE departments provided research support for their full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members and 74% offered such support for full-time nontenured or non-tenure-track faculty, only 41% offered such support for part-time faculty.

Supporting Student Careers

• Fifty-seven percent of LLE departments rated the career services at their college or university “good” or “very good” for their students, while 11% rated the services “poor” or “very poor.”
• A relatively large share—approximately a third—of LLE departments had a professional program (such as teacher credentialing). Faculty members in the department were also more likely to be teaching courses in professional schools than other humanities disciplines (with 29% of LLE departments having that sort of cross-listing, compared to 12% in all surveyed disciplines combined).1

Engaging the Digital

• Twenty-six percent of LLE departments had one or more faculty members specializing in the digital humanities, but only 9% offered a seminar on digital methods for research and teaching.
• In the 2016–17 academic year, 24% of LLE departments offered fully online courses, while 14% offered hybrid courses. Departments offered an average of 2.7 fully online courses and 4.3 hybrid courses (each average was calculated over the number of departments offering a course of that kind).

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
• 1Percentages were calculated across only those departments whose institutions have professional schools.