Yesterday, I looked at the Department of Education data on doctorates awarded from 1971 up to 2004. I was going to look at the aggregated data by discipline, but, well, first, I don’t know if you’ve actually downloaded data from the Dept of Ed, but whoever sets up the Excel files doesn’t have a clue that Excel is for analyzing data, and not making something look like a dot matrix printout. In between each column of data you have a column that’s there just to put in a | so there will be a little line. Complete idiocy. Oh, and I was starving and had to eat.
When I opened the XLS file this morning, another problem (again related to idiocy) arose: The almost haphazard way disciplines had been aggregated. There were things that should not have been aggregated ("Foreign languages and literatures, linguistics" was one), which I could do nothing about, since there was no way to disaggregate the data. There were things that weren’t aggregated but should have been, which I dealt with. There were disciplines that, well, I had to guess at, such as "Security and protective services," which I called forensics (I’m not sure that’s what it is).
The disciplines I ended up with are: Agriculture and natural resources, Biological/biomedical/health, Business, Education, Engineering-related, Forensics, Public administration and social services, Humanities, Information sciences, Legal, Math/sciences, Phys Ed, Social sciences, and Theology and religious vocations. They’re not perfect, but they’re the best I could do with the mess the Dept of Ed provided (Architecture is included in Engineering-related, for example). Anyway, here are the data, sorted by the difference in the number of doctorates awarded:
| Doctorates conferred by degree-granting institutions, by discipline: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2003-04 | |||||||||
| Discipline | 1970-71 | 1975-76 | 1980-81 | 1985-86 | 1990-91 | 1995-96 | 2000-01 | 2003-04 | Delta |
| Biological/biomedical/health | 5,199 | 4,858 | 5,526 | 5,649 | 6,753 | 7,945 | 8,322 | 10,788 | 5,589 |
| Social sciences | 5,927 | 7,492 | 6,945 | 6,855 | 7,173 | 8,276 | 9,375 | 8,967 | 3,040 |
| Engineering-related | 3,724 | 2,956 | 2,701 | 3,529 | 5,465 | 6,572 | 5,757 | 6,154 | 2,430 |
| Humanities | 4,243 | 4,669 | 3,774 | 3,728 | 4,159 | 5,392 | 5,645 | 5,713 | 1,470 |
| Education | 6,041 | 7,202 | 7,279 | 6,610 | 6,189 | 6,246 | 6,284 | 7,088 | 1,047 |
| Theology and religious vocations | 312 | 1,022 | 1,273 | 1,185 | 1,076 | 1,517 | 1,461 | 1,304 | 992 |
| Information sciences | 167 | 323 | 334 | 412 | 745 | 929 | 828 | 964 | 797 |
| Business | 774 | 906 | 808 | 923 | 1,185 | 1,366 | 1,180 | 1,481 | 707 |
| Public administration and social services | 174 | 292 | 362 | 382 | 430 | 499 | 574 | 649 | 475 |
| Phys Ed | 2 | 15 | 42 | 39 | 28 | 104 | 177 | 222 | 220 |
| Agriculture and natural resources | 1,086 | 928 | 1,067 | 1,158 | 1,185 | 1,259 | 1,127 | 1,185 | 99 |
| Legal | 20 | 76 | 60 | 54 | 90 | 91 | 286 | 119 | 99 |
| Forensics | 1 | 9 | 21 | 21 | 28 | 38 | 44 | 54 | 53 |
| Math/sciences | 5,523 | 4,244 | 3,833 | 4,263 | 5,226 | 5,670 | 4,908 | 4,875 | -648 |
And here are the top five plotted:
Note that the only disciplines that awarded fewer doctorates in 2004 than 1971 are math and the sciences. Also note that these are doctorate degrees, and with a few exceptions (some of the doctorates awarded in Biological/biomedical/health, for example), doctorates are research degrees, and have one primary job market: The university. Therefore, you can’t interpret these data in terms of recent market trends (the boom in IT degrees won’t be reflected here, because that boom is in Bachelor and Master degrees, and the big increase in biomedical doctorates has something to do with the boom in biotech, but because of the way these data were aggregated, we don’t know how many of those biomedical doctorates are going into the private sector, and how many are going to the university).
These trends do affect the job market, of course: The university faculty job market. That’s the point. And given that the retirements are underway in most departments, if these trends continue, it’s not going to be a great job market for those who are just now starting PhD programs.
KDeRosa says:
How does this data account for the 50% increase in population of the US from 1970?
April 8, 2007, 9:11 amdragonlady474 says:
Boy the natural resource and agriculture category didn’t change much either. Interesting.
April 8, 2007, 10:02 amMyrtle says:
If more of the population is attending college because they are better prepared then it makes sense that there are more PhDs…but why the decline in math & science? What does it mean?
April 8, 2007, 11:22 amDoctorates By Discipline says:
[…] Doctorates By Discipline […]
April 8, 2007, 11:31 amrightwingprof says:
Yes, to some extent. Remember, we’re not talking undergraduate degrees here or even Master degrees, but doctorates, which only a small percentage of college students do. A very small percentage, compared to undergraduates or Masters students (since many Master-level degree programs are professional, and not research degrees). So the question is, “Is the increase in college students large enough to explain the increase in doctoral students?”
April 8, 2007, 11:57 amrightwingprof says:
Interesting, but logical when you think about it. Ag is a pragmatic field, as opposed to, say, English, which is not, and while every university has an English department (and is therefore a possible place to work for a newly minted PhD), only ag schools have ag departments.
It’s sort of like doing a PhD in business. Business, like ag, is a pragmatic field, but a PhD in business is a PhD, and is an academic research degree. The differences are that there are fewer jobs in ag departments, and that the attraction of a PhD in business is it’s the PhD you want if you want to be faculty and get paid significantly more money than most university faculty.
April 8, 2007, 12:03 pm