Share of Humanities Departments Providing Career Preparation Opportunities to Master’s Students, by Activity Type, 2017

Share of Humanities Departments Providing Career Preparation Opportunities to Master’s Students, by Activity Type, 2017

Judging by reports from scholarly societies, conceptions differ as to the purpose of a humanities master’s degree.9 A review of the program catalogs for a wide variety of master’s degree programs in the humanities found some graduate departments offering programs designed for personal enrichment, while others focused on the training of students for digital and public humanities work or teaching.

While some graduate programs are increasingly focused on preparing students for the workforce, a recent survey of humanities departments found that the majority do not offer career preparation activities in the form of presentations, internships, or occupationally oriented coursework. An even smaller share of departments requires students to participate in such activities. Occupationally oriented coursework or workshops were the most widespread form of required career preparation, but only 15% of departments required this of their master’s students.10

Endnotes

• 9Association of Departments of English Ad Hoc Committee on the Master’s Degree, Rethinking the Master’s Degree in English for a New Century (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011). See also Philip M. Katz, Retrieving the Master’s Degree from the Dustbin of History (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 2006).
• 10American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Indicators, The State of the Humanities in Four-Year Colleges and Universities (2017) (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017).