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• The share of new humanities and arts Ph.D. recipients reporting a firm job (academic or nonacademic) or postdoctoral study commitment1 at graduation fell from 67% in 1990 to 59% in 2020 (Indicator III-20a).
• While the share of humanities and arts Ph.D.’s with any sort of commitment at graduation declined over the three decades, the percentage reporting a firm commitment for postdoctoral study actually increased, from 4% in 1990 to 12% in 2020. But this rise did not make up for the decline in job commitments, which fell from 63% to 47% over the same time period.
• Compared with graduates from other major academic fields, humanities and arts Ph.D.’s were the least likely to have a definite employment or postdoctoral study commitment when they finished their programs in virtually every year examined here (two exceptions are 1990 and 1995, when the share of engineering Ph.D.’s with a commitment was particularly small; Indicator III-20b). In 2020, for example, when only 59% of new humanities Ph.D. recipients reported a firm commitment, 70% of doctoral degree recipients from all fields combined had such a commitment. The fields with the largest shares of graduates with a commitment in 2020 were mathematics/computer science and behavioral/social science (76% in both cases).
• As was true for graduates from almost every other field, the share of new humanities and arts Ph.D.’s reporting a firm commitment experienced peaks and valleys over the past 30 years, with 1995 and 2015 representing low points for several. The year 2015 was the nadir for humanities and arts, with only 55% of graduates having a job or postdoctoral study commitment at graduation.
• The degree to which those commitments were for jobs as opposed to postdoctoral study varied considerably across academic fields. The share of humanities Ph.D.’s with a postdoctoral study commitment was markedly smaller than in STEM fields throughout the 1990–2020 time period. But even within STEM there was a substantial range. In 2020, for instance, less than a quarter of math and computer science graduates reported a postdoctoral commitment, while over 41% of physical and earth sciences graduates were pursuing postgraduate study.
• The humanities and arts were similar to most other fields in having experienced an increase in the share of new Ph.D.’s leaving their program with a firm commitment for postdoctoral study. The notable exception was the life sciences, which saw a slow—but fairly steady—decrease in share, from 47% in 1990 to 38% in 2020.

Sector of Employment

• New humanities Ph.D.’s with a definite U.S. employment commitment were much more likely to have a commitment for an academic job than their counterparts in the STEM fields (Indicator III-20c).2 (Note: The data do not reveal what kind of academic jobs these are. The published counts include any employment at a university or college, including full-/part-time faculty, administrative, and other jobs). In 2020, 70% of humanities doctoral degree recipients with an employment commitment in the U.S. indicated they would be taking a job in the academic sector. By comparison, in the behavioral and social sciences (the STEM field with the highest share of new Ph.D.’s with an employment commitment in academia), the share of those with a U.S. job commitment entering academia was 51%. For new engineering Ph.D.’s the share was 10%, the smallest proportion among the fields examined here. When comparing these numbers, it is important to remember that a higher percentage of STEM graduates reported a postdoctoral study commitment (Indicator III-20b), and thus the proportion of new Ph.D.’s who remain in higher education in the short-term may not vary as much by field as this indicator suggests.
• Over the 30-year period examined here, the share of new graduates with a definite U.S. job commitment who reported taking a job in academia decreased in almost every field, with the share for all fields considered together contracting from 52% in 1990 to 40% in 2020. Among humanities and arts graduates, the share decreased from 80% to 70% over the same time span.
• In 2020, the second- and third-largest employment sectors for humanities and arts Ph.D.’s with a U.S. job commitment at graduation were not-for-profits (excluding academic institutions) at 11% and “other” (mainly elementary and secondary schools) at 9%.
• In contrast to the humanities, jobs in business or industry made up at least the plurality of reported employment commitments among new engineering and natural sciences graduates in 2020. Only 7% of new humanities and arts Ph.D.’s with a U.S. job commitment reported a business/industry job, compared to 77% of engineering Ph.D.’s and 69% of graduates from physical/earth sciences. The share for all academic fields combined was 40%.

Humanities Disciplines

• Among new humanities and arts Ph.D.’s generally (not just those with a U.S. job commitment, as with Indicator III-20c), the share of graduates with various types of commitment differs among the SED’s broad disciplinary categories (Indicator III-20d). Over the 2010–2020 time period, history graduates were less likely to have a firm job commitment in academia than their counterparts in “Letters” or in languages and literatures other than English (LLOTE).3 History also experienced a greater decline from 2010 to 2020 than other disciplines in the share of graduates with such a commitment. In each year during this time period, however, history graduates were somewhat more likely than other humanities graduates to have a firm nonacademic job commitment. The gap between history graduates and their counterparts in Letters and LLOTE was more prounounced when it came to postdoctoral study. In 2020, more than 18% of history graduates reported such a commitment, while less than 10% of Letters and LLOTE graduates did.

Gender

• In virtually every year from 2010 to 2020, women were somewhat more likely to leave their doctoral program with a definite job commitment in academia than men (Indicator III-20e).4 In 2020, 36% of women had a job offer of this type, compared to 31% of men. As described above, it is difficult to know what kind of academic jobs these are, as publicly available information from the SED includes any employment at a university or college (including full-/part-time faculty, administrative, and other employment) in the academic job category. Among new Ph.D.’s with a job commitment outside academia, the reverse was true, with men consistently—but only modestly—more likely to graduate with a nonacademic job in hand. Women and men were virtually indistinguishable in the share reporting a definite commitment for postgraduate study (Indicator III-20f).
• Among the individual humanities disciplines over the 2010–2020 time period, only history had a relatively consistent gender differential in the share of graduates leaving their program with a definite academic job commitment. For most of the decade, women completing a history Ph.D. were modestly more likely than men to graduate with such a commitment, although 2020 saw a larger gap, with 32% of women leaving their doctoral program with an academic job commitment, as compared to 25.5% of men. Across all humanities disciplines, men and women with new doctorates were consistently equal (or nearly so, any differences being negligible) in the percentage having nonacademic job commitments. For postdoctoral study commitments, only in languages and literatures other than English was one gender consistently more likely to graduate with such a commitment in hand. In most years a somewhat greater share of men than women graduated having already secured a postdoctoral study position.

Endnotes

• 1In the academic, industrial, government, or not-for-profit sector.
• 2Information for all employment commitments (in the U.S. or another nation) is not publicly available for all years, and thus the focus here is on job commitments in the U.S. only. In 2020, approximately 10% of commitments reported by humanities and arts graduates (including both postdoctoral study and employment) were outside the United States.
• 3“Letters” encompasses American literature (U.S. and Canada); classics; comparative literature; creative writing; English language; English literature (British & Commonwealth); folklore; rhetoric and composition; and speech and rhetorical studies.
• 4These are the only two gender categories employed by the SED.