Eek! The Plummeting Philosophy Major in the U.S.

Three years ago, I posted some optimistic reflections about how the philosophy major seemed to be recovering from its recent decline in the U.S. I take it back. The National Center for Education Statistics has released its numbers from the 2023-2024 academic year, and it's bad.

First off: The humanities in general have been hemorrhaging majors since about 2008. English in particular has been hammered. In the 2000-2001 academic year, 4.5% bachelor's degrees recipients were English majors. Now it's 1.7%. [1]

[declining humanities majors; click to enlarge and clarify]

Since philosophy started out low, its decline is not as visually evident in the graph. Here are the raw numbers.

Year: Philosophy BAs awarded (as a % of all Bachelor's degrees)

2001: 5836 (.49%)
2002: 6529 (.52%)
2003: 7023 (.54%)
2004: 7707 (.57%)
2005: 8283 (.60%)
2006: 8532 (.60%)
2007: 8541 (.59%)
2008: 8778 (.59%)
2009: 8996 (.59%)
2010: 9268 (.59%)
2011: 9292 (.57%)
2012: 9362 (.56%)
2013: 9427 (.54%)
2014: 8820 (.49%)
2015: 8184 (.44%)
2016: 7489 (.40%)
2017: 7572 (.39%)
2018: 7667 (.39%)
2019: 8074 (.40%)
2020: 8209 (.40%)
2021: 8328 (.40%)
2022: 7958 (.39%)
2023: 7550 (.38%)
2024: 7091 (.36%)

As you can see, there were grounds for hope around 2019-2021. However, since 2021 the number of bachelor's degree completions in philosophy has fallen from 8328 to 7091 -- a 15% decline in just three years. The percentage of college students receiving philosophy degrees is at an all-time low.

Bachelor's degree completions in general have declined somewhat. They peaked at 2,068,932 in the 2020-2021 academic year and have declined slightly in every subsequent year, down to 1,959,325 for the 2023-2024 academic year -- a 5% decline overall. Possible explanations of this general trend include: a hangover from the pandemic, demographic shifts, or a decline in the perceived value of a university education.

I was curious whether the decline in philosophy majors would be more pronounced at schools with fewer philosophy majors. In a post from 2021, I had found that from 2010-2019, just 20 schools accounted for 17% of philosophy degrees awarded in the U.S. Returning to those same data for the 2023-2024 academic year, I found that the top 20 schools now account for 22% of all philosophy degrees awarded.

Another way to examine the increasing concentration is to check Carnegie classifications. Carnegie classifies undergraduate institutions as "selective" if they are in the 40th-80th percentile of selectivity in undergraduate admissions based on test scores, and "more selective" if they in the 80th-100th percentile of selectivity. Fifty-two percent of philosophy degree recipients are from "more selective" schools, compared to 25% of bachelor's degree recipients overall; and 84% of philosophy degree recipients are from either selective or more selective schools, compared to 62% overall. In 2010-2019, 45% of philosophy BAs were from more selective schools (vs. 23% overall) and 80% were from either selective or more selective schools (vs. 60% overall), confirming the increasing concentration.

Thus, relatively elite schools award disproportionately many philosophy degrees -- and this tendency has increased as the percentage of students earning philosophy degrees has declined.

For those who are curious which universities awarded the most philosophy degrees in 2023-2024, according to the NCES IPEDS classifications, it is:

University of Pennsylvania 193
University of California-Los Angeles 117
University of California-Santa Barbara 93
University of California-Berkeley 91
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 88
University of Southern California 84
New York University 76
University of Maryland-College Park 75
University of Chicago 71
Boston College 71
University of Colorado Boulder 69
Boston University 67
Arizona State University Digital Immersion 65
University of Wisconsin-Madison 57
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 56
University of California-Davis 55
Emory University 55
Columbia University in the City of New York 53
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 51
University of California-Santa Cruz 48
University of Florida 47
Arizona State University Campus Immersion 46
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 46
The University of Texas at Austin 46

Note: Some of these numbers include interdisciplinary philosophy majors, such as Penn's Philosophy, Politics & Economics major.

All of these universities except the two Arizona State universities are Carnegie classified as "more selective".

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[1] Method: The NCES IPEDS databases, custom data files, EZ group U.S. only, completions by CIP number, including both first and second majors, CIP categories 16 for foreign language and literature, 23 for English, 54 for History, and 38.01 for Philosophy. Each year captures the academic year ending that spring. For example 2024 is the 2023-2024 academic year.

Women Earned 37% of U.S. Philosophy Doctorates in 2024, Up from 28% Ten Years Ago

... but what explains the change?

For about 25 years, from the 1990s to the mid 2010s, the percentage of women earning PhDs in philosophy in the U.S. hovered around 27%. In the late 2010s, the percentage began to rise. Newly released data from the National Science Foundation show women earning 37% of philosophy doctorates in 2024.

Here are the data since 1973. The red line is the year-by-year data; the black line is the five-year floating average. (For more details about the data see this note [1].)

[chart showing an increase from about 17% in the 1970s, to about 27% in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s, rising to 37% in 2024; click to enlarge and clarify]

Due to the noisiness of the data, it's hard to tell when the change started exactly, but around 2016-2019 is a good guess.

The increase is not just chance variation. From 2020-2024, the NSF reports 2144 PhD recipients in philosophy, classifying 704 (33%) as female. For 2015-2019, they report 727/2424 (30%; p = .04 by the two-proportion z test). For 2010-2014, it's 686/2419 (28%, p = .001, comparing 2020-2024 with 2010-2014).

Bachelor's degrees show a strikingly similar pattern. From the late 1980s to the early 2010s, with stunning consistency, women earned about 32% of bachelor's degrees in philosophy. Starting around 2017, the percentage of women philosophy Bachelor's recipients began to increase, rising to over 40% by 2023.

Here's the chart for Bachelor's recipients from my analysis last year:

[chart showing an increase starting around 2017; click to enlarge and clarify]

Across the university as a whole, the percentage of Bachelor's degrees and PhDs earned by women has not dramatically increased since the late 2010s. These recent increases are a philosophy-specific phenomenon, as far as I can tell.

If the increase in women PhDs were mostly a pipeline effect, we should expect the increase in percentage of women earning philosophy PhDs to occur about seven years after the increase in percentage of women earning Bachelor's degrees. That would reflect approximately seven years on average between receipt of Bachelor's degree and receipt of PhD, with the students of the late 2010s receiving their PhDs about now. But that's not what we see. Instead, Bachelor's and PhDs increase simultaneously.

This leaves me a little puzzled about the cause. If it were that women were increasingly attracted to philosophy, for some cultural reason or some reason internal to philosophy, that would probably show up as a pipeline effect, with a delay between the undergraduate bump and the graduate bump.

One possibility is a decrease in attrition rates for women (relative to men) starting in the late 2010s, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Although I don't have systematic data on this, I've seen various patchwork pieces of evidence suggesting that attrition rates out of philosophy may be, or may have been, typically higher for women than for men.

If attrition rates have decreased specially for women, why? One possibility that could explain the synchrony in decreasing attrition rates for women would be a general improvement in the climate for women in philosophy departments, both at the undergraduate and the graduate level. Anecdotally, it strikes me that it was in the 2010s that the climate problem for women in the discipline began to receive broad attention. If so, perhaps this led to some effective positive changes (of course not everywhere and not perfectly).

However, this is to string one conjecture atop another atop another, in total leaving me with a confidence significantly less than 50% that this an adequate explanation (though it might be one factor among several). I'd be curious to hear alternative conjectures.

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[1] Methodological note: The SED attempts to collect information on all PhDs awarded in accredited U.S. universities, generally receiving over 90% response rates. Gender information is classified exhaustively as "male" or "female" with no nonbinary option. The classification of "Philosophy" has shifted over the years. From 2012-2020, a separate subfield of "ethics" was introduced, which has been merged with "philosophy" for analysis. (It was always relatively few degrees.) Starting in 2021, two new categories were introduced: "History/ philosophy of science, technology, and society" (formerly "History, science and technology and society") and "Philosophy and Religion, not elsewhere classified". I have excluded both of the latter categories from my analysis. Both are relatively small: 58 and 67 degrees total in 2024, respectively.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Philosophy: Good Practices Guide

Strange that it need be said, but yes, diversity, equity, and inclusion are good things. I can understand some of the backlash against efforts perceived as too heavy handed, but let's not forget:

In diverse institutions and societies, more ideas and perspectives collaborate, compete, and cross-pollinate, to the advantage of all.

In equitable institutions and societies, people and ideas can thrive without unwarranted disadvantage and suppression, again to the advantage of all.

In inclusive institutions and societies, alternative perspectives and people with unusual backgrounds are welcomed, fostering even better diversity, with all the attendant advantages.

Since 2017, I've been involved in the creation of a Good Practices Guide for diversifying philosophy, originally under the leadership of Nicole Hassoun (other co-directors include Sherri Conklin, Bjoern Freter, and Elly Vintiadis). We began with two huge sessions at the Pacific APA (each with over 20 panelists) in 2018 and 2019, published a portion of the guide in Ethics in 2022 (Appendix J), and received feedback from literally hundreds of philosophers and all of the diversity-related APA committees, ultimately being endorsed by the APA Committee on Inclusiveness. Don't expect perfection: It's genuinely a corporate authorship, with many compromises and something for everyone to dislike. I'd be amazed if anyone thought we got the balance right on all issues and all dimensions of diversity.

Still, perhaps especially in this moment of retrenchment in the U.S., I hope that many people and organizations will find valuable suggestions in it.

Our guide appeared in print last week in APA Studies on Philosophy and the Black Experience (vol 24, no 2).

[image of title and preface]

16% of Authors in Elite Philosophy Journals Are Women

In some ways, the gender situation has been improving in philosophy. Women now constitute about 40% of graduating majors in philosophy in the U.S., up from about 32% in the 1980s-2010s. There is, I think, substantially more awareness of gender issues and the desirability of gender diversity than there was fifteen years ago. And yet, at the highest levels of impact and prestige, philosophy remains overwhelmingly male.

One measure of this is authorship in elite philosophy journals. For this post, I examined the past two years' tables of contents of Philosophical Review, Mind, Journal of Philosophy, and Nous -- widely considered to be the most elite general philosophy journals in mainstream Anglophone philosophy. (Some rankings put Philosophy & Phenomenological Research alongside these four.) I estimated the gender of each author of each article, commentary, or response (excluding book reviews and editorial prefaces), based gender-typical name, gender-typical photo, pronoun use, and/or personal knowledge, generally using at least two criteria. Of 291 included authors, there were only two who were either non-binary or defied classification -- in both cases, based on an expressed preference for they/them pronouns. There's always a risk of mistake, but for the most part I expect that my gender classifications accurately reflect how the authors identify and are perceived, with at most a 1-2% error rate.

Overall, I found:

Authorship Rates In Four
Elite Philosophy Journals
(Past Two Years):
Women: 46 authorships
Men: 243 authorships
Nonbinary/unclassified: 2 authorships

Percent women: 16%

Women now earn about 30% of PhDs in the U.S. and constitute almost 30% of American Philosophical Association members who report their gender -- so authorship in these journals is substantially more skewed than faculty in the United States. Of course, many authors are neither located nor received their PhD in the U.S., so these percentages aren't strictly comparable. However, PhD and faculty percentages are broadly similar in the U.K. and, impressionistically, in other high-income Anglophone countries. (I'm less sure outside the English-speaking world, but researchers in non-Anglophone countries author only a small percentage of articles in elite Anglophone journals; see here for an analysis of the insularity of Anglophone philosophy.)

Now, one possible explanation of this skew is that women are more likely to specialize in ethics than in other areas of philosophy (see these ten-year-old data), and these four journals publish relatively little ethics. To explore this possibility, I did two things:

First, I coded each article in the big four journals as either "ethics" or "non-ethics", based on the title or the abstract if the title was ambiguous. I included political philosophy, social philosophy, metaethics, and history of ethics as ethics. (Of course, there were some gray-area cases and judgment calls.)

Second, I added two journals to my list: Ethics and Philosophy & Public Affairs, generally considered the two most elite ethics journals (though after the editorial turmoil at PPA last year, it's not clear whether this will remain true of PPA).

In the big four, I classifed 60/291 (21%) authorships as ethics. (Perhaps this is a slight underrepresentation of ethics in these journals, relative to the proportion of research faculty in the Anglophone world who specialize in ethics?) In these journals, I found that indeed women have a higher percentage of ethics authorships than non-ethics authorships:

Authorship by Gender
in Big 4 Philosophy Journals
Ethics vs. Non-Ethics
Ethics: 17/60 (28%)
Non-ethics: 29/231 (13%)
[Fisher's exact 2-tail, p = .005]

If we juice up the sample size by adding in Ethics and PPA, we get the following:

Authorship by Gender
in 6 Elite Philosophy Journals
Ethics vs. Non-Ethics
Ethics: 40/142 (29%)
Non-ethics: 29/231 (13%)
[Fisher's exact 2-tail, p < .001]

[corrected Apr 27]

Strikingly, women appear to be more than twice as likely to author ethics articles than non-ethics articles.

Ten years ago, I did some similar analyses, comparing ethics vs. non-ethics authorships in two-year bins every 20 years from 1955 to 2015. In those samples, too, I found women to author only a small percentage of articles in elite journals overall (13% in 2014-2015) and to be more likely to author in ethics, so the trends are historically consistent.

ETA April 28: To be clear, all four journals normally use double-anonymous refereeing.

Women Constitute 12% and People of Color 3% of the Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Last week, I posted a list of the 376 most-cited contemporary authors (born 1900 or later) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Citation in the SEP is, I think, a better measure of influence in what I call "mainstream Anglophone philosophy" than more standard bibliometric measures, like Google Scholar and Web of Science.

In previous work, my collaborators and I have generally found that within U.S. academic philosophy, the higher in rank or prestige the target group, the less racial and gender diversity. Accordingly, one might expect people at very highest levels of prestige in mainstream Anglophone philosophy overwhelmingly to be non-Hispanic White men.

I attempted to code the gender (woman, man, nonbinary) of every philosopher in the SEP most-cited 376, based on a combination of personal and professional knowledge, information from the web, and gender-typicality of their name and photos. On similar grounds, I attempted to code every author on this list as either Hispanic/Latino or non-Hispanic/Latino and, among the non-Hispanic authors, White or non-White (using race/ethnicity categories as standardly defined in the U.S.). This is an imperfect exercise, and it wouldn't surprise me if I've made some mistakes. I hope you'll correct me if you notice any errors (raw data here), and please accept my apologies in advance![1]

I also guessed birth year. In the majority of cases, I found birthyear information on Wikipedia or another easily available source. Otherwise, I estimated based on year of Bachelor's degree (estimating 22 years old), year of PhD (estimating 29 years old), or year of first solo-authored publication (also estimating 29 years old). This enables some generational comparisons. Again, I welcome corrections.

Overall, among the 376 philosophers, I count 44 women (12%) and one non-binary person (#223, Judith Butler). I count only eleven (3%) who are Hispanic and/or non-White. Only one of the 376 is a woman of color (#260, Linda Martín Alcoff), and 321 (85%) are non-Hispanic White men.

Here it is as a pie chart:

[click to enlarge and clarify]

The gender skew is even more extreme if we consider the top 100 (actually the top 102, accounting for ties): six women (6%) and 97% non-Hispanic White. The highest ranked person of color is Jaegwon Kim at #59.

As you might expect, the skew is larger in the older generations (born before 1946) than in the younger generations. Over the past several decades, there has tended to be a slow reduction in gender and racial disparity in U.S. academic philosophy (see, e.g., here and here). However, the generational disparity reduction in the SEP is fairly small.

I analyzed generational trends in two ways: First, I binned philosophers by estimated birthyear into one of four generations: "Greatest" (1900-1924), "Silent" (1925-1945), "Boomer" (1946-1964), and "Generation X" (1965-1979). (One "Millenial" was [update Aug 14] Two older Millennials were binned with the Gen-Xers.) Second, I looked at correlations between the demographic categories and birthyear.

Gender analysis by generation:
Greatest: 40/44 men (91%)
Silent: 133/145 (92%)
Boomer: 116/136 (85%)
Gen X: 42/51 (82%)

Expressed as a correlation of gender (man = 1, woman or nonbinary = 0) with birthyear: r = -.10, p = .046. This negative correlation indicates that as birthyear increases (i.e., the philosopher is younger), the philosopher is less likely to be a man. However, the size of the effect is small and barely crosses the conventional p < .05 threshold of statistical significance. The nine highest-ranked Gen-Xers are all White men. No Gen X women rank among the top 200.

Among the eleven philosophers who are Hispanic/Latino or non-White, none are Greatest, five are Silent, four are Boomers, and two are Gen X. Statistical analysis is of limited value with such small numbers, but for what it's worth, status in this category does directionally correlate with birthyear, with a very small effect size and no statistical significance (r = -.06, p = .25).

ETA 10:46 a.m.:

To see if there's a relationship between gender and rank on the list, I took the natural log of the ranks (since the difference between rank 1 and rank 11 is much more meaningful than between rank 301 and 311) and calculated its correlation with gender (1 = man, 0 = woman or nonbinary): r = -.12, p = .016. The negative relationship of course indicates that men are likely to be higher ranked (i.e., closer to rank 1). As before, race/ethnicity numbers are probably too small for meaningful statistical analysis, but for completeness the result is a virtually flat r = -.02, p = .77.

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In an independent analysis, Liam Kofi Bright counts nine non-White philosophers on this list, exactly matching my analysis except omitting two (not non-White?) Latino philosophers (Sosa and Bueno). This supports my sense of how the philosophers on this list are racially perceived by others in the field. (One complication: Bueno identifies as Brazilian, and there's a lot of confusion about whether Brazilian counts as "Hispanic" in the U.S. context.)

Demographic Trends in the U.S. Philosophy Major, 2001-2022 -- Including Total Majors, Second Majors, Gender, and Race

I'm preparing for an Eastern APA session on the "State of Philosophy" next Thursday, and I thought I'd share some data on philosophy major bachelor's degree completions from the National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS database, which compiles data on virtually all students graduating from accredited colleges and universities in the U.S., as reported by administrators.

I examined all data from the 2000-2001 academic year (the first year in which they started recording data on second majors) through 2021-2022 (the most recent available year).

Total Numbers of Philosophy Majors: The Decline Has Stopped

First, the sharp decline in philosophy majors since 2013 has stopped:

2001:  5836

2002:  6529

2003:  7023

2004:  7707

2005:  8283

2006:  8532

2007:  8541

2008:  8778

2009:  8996

2010:  9268

2011:  9292

2012:  9362

2013:  9427

2014:  8820

2015:  8184

2016:  7489

2017:  7572

2018:  7667

2019:  8074

2020:  8209

2021:  8328

2022:  7958

(The decline between 2021 and 2022 reflects a general decline in completions of bachelor's degrees due to the pandemic that year, rather than a trend specific to philosophy.)

In general, the humanities have declined sharply since 2010, and history, English, and foreign languages and literature continue to decline.  This graph shows the trend:

[click image to enlarge and clarify]

The decline in the English major is particularly striking, from 4.5% of bachelor's degrees awarded in 2000-2001 to 1.8% in 2021-2022.  Philosophy peaked at 0.60% in 2005-2006 and has held steady at 0.39%-0.40% since 2015-2016.

Philosophy Relies on Double Majors

[Expanded and edited for clarity, Jan 15] Breaking the data down by first major vs second major, we can see that over time an increasing proportion of students have philosophy as their second major.  In some schools, the distinction between "first major" and "second major" is meaningful, with the first indicating the primary major.  In other schools the distinction is not meaningful.  In the 2021-2022 academic year, 24% of students who took a bachelor's degree in philosophy had it listed as their second major.

[click image to enlarge and clarify]

From these numbers we can estimate that philosophy students are at least moderately likely to be double majors.  While it's impossible to know what percentage of students who took philosophy as their first major also carried a second major, a ballpark estimate might assume that about half of students with philosophy plus one other major list philosophy first rather than second.  If so, then approximately half of all philosophy majors (48%) are double majors.  Overall, across all majors, only 5% of students double majored.

The ease of double majoring is likely to influence the number of students who choose philosophy as a major.

Gender Disparity Is Decreasing

NCES classifies all students as men or women, with no nonbinary category and no unclassified students.  Since the beginning of the available data in the 1980s through the mid-2010s, the percentage of women among philosophy bachelor's recipients hovered steadily between 30% and 34%, not changing even as the total percentage of women increased from 51% to 57%.  However, the last several years have seen a clear decrease in gender disparity, with women now earning 41% of philosophy degrees.

[click image to enlarge and clarify]

Black Students Remain Underrepresented in Philosophy Compared to Undergraduates Overall, and Other Race/Ethnicity Data

NCES uses the following race/ethnicity categories: U.S. nonresident, race/ethnicity unknown, Hispanic or Latino (any race), and among U.S. residents who are not Hispanic or Latino: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, and two or more races.  Before 2007-2008, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander was included with Asian, but inconsistently until 2010-2011.  The two-or-more races option was also introduced in the 2007-2008 academic year, again with inconsistent reporting for several years.

I've charted these categories below.  As you can see, for most categories, the percentages are similar for philosophy and for graduates overall, except that non-Hispanic White is slightly higher for philosophy and non-Hispanic Black significantly lower. In 2021-2022, non-Hispanic Black people were 14% of the U.S. population age 18-24, 10% of bachelor's degree recipients, and 6% of philosophy bachelor's recipients.

[as usual, click the figures to expand and clarify]

I interpret the sharp increase in multi-racial students as reflecting reporting issues and an increasing willingness of students to identify as multi-racial.

It's also worth noting that although philosophy majors are approximately as likely to be Hispanic/Latino as graduates overall, Hispanic/Latino students are underrepresented among bachelor's degree recipients relative to the U.S. population age 18-24 (17% vs 23%). Non-Hispanic American Indian / Alaska Native students are also underrepresented among overall graduates (0.46% vs. 0.84% of the population age 18-24), and maybe particularly so in philosophy (0.37% vs 0.46% in the most recent year).

U.S. Philosophy PhDs Are Still Overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White (Though a Bit Less So Than 10 Years Ago)

Nine years ago, I compared the racial and ethnic composition of U.S. academic philosophy, as measured by PhDs awarded, with that of the other humanities. I found -- no surprise -- that a large majority of Philosophy PhD recipients were non-Hispanic White. I also found, somewhat more to my surprise, that this did not make it unusual among the humanities. Digging into the details suggested an explanation: Many of the subfields of the humanities, e.g., German literature and European history, specialize in the European tradition. Such subfields were typically as predominantly White as philosophy or even more so. Subfields of the humanities specializing in non-European traditions, e.g., Asian history, tended to be not nearly as White, with substantial proportions of PhD recipients identifying with the racial or ethnic category associated with the region.

At the time, I suggested the following hypothesis: Philosophy might be overwhelmingly White because students tend to perceive it as something like an area studies or cultural studies discipline focusing on the European (and White North American) tradition. (See Bryan Van Norden and Jay Garfield for an articulation and critique of this way of seeing academic philosophy as practiced in the U.S.).

Nine years later, I find myself wondering to what extent the pattern still holds. Time for an update!

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Before presenting the results, two nerdy methodological notes (feel free to skip).

Methodological note on ethnic and racial categories and non-response rates: These analyses rely on the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates. The SED aims to collect data on all PhDs awarded in accredited U.S. universities, and typically reports response rates over 90%. The most recent available year is 2021 (response rate 92%). Data are based on self-report of ethnicity and race. The top-level category split is temporary visa holders vs. U.S. citizens and permanent residents. U.S. citizens and permanent residents are divided into Hispanic or Latino, not Hispanic or Latino, or ethnicity not reported. Respondents who identify as not Hispanic or Latino are then divided into the racial categories American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, White, More than one race, or Other race or race not reported. The analyses below exclude temporary visa holders and respondents who did not report their ethnicity or race or reported "other".  In Philosophy, 76% of respondents indicated that they were U.S. citizens or permanent residents (18% indicated that they were temporary visa holders, and 6% presumably did not answer the question), and among the U.S. citizens and permanent residents, 5% either reported "other" or did not report their ethnicity or race.

Methodological note on disciplinary classification as "Philosophy": Before 2021, the SED had a two philosophy-relevant subfields, "philosophy" and "ethics", which were generally merged in public data presentation. (In a custom analysis I requested several years ago, I found that "ethics" was only a small number of doctorates.) Starting in 2021, there are three philosophy-relevant subfields: "History/philosophy of science, technology and society" (68 PhDs awarded), "Philosophy" (399 PhDs awarded), and "Philosophy and religious studies not elsewhere classified" (degrees classified as broadly within the field of philosophy and religious studies but not designated specifically as philosophy or specifically as religious studies; 67 PhDs awarded). "Ethics" no longer appears to be a category. My analysis will focus only on the "Philosophy" group. For comparison, in 2020, 460 PhDs were awarded in "Philosophy" or "Ethics", and in 2019, 474 PhDs were awarded in "Philosophy" or "Ethics". It is likely that most of the degrees that would have been classified in 2020 as "Philosophy" or "Ethics" are classified in 2021 as "Philosophy". However, since it's unlikely that the number of philosophy degrees awarded declined by 13% between the two years (from 460 to 399), it is likely that a small but non-trivial percentage of degrees that would have been classified as "Philosophy" or "Ethics" in 2020 are now classified as "History/philosophy of science, technology and society" or as "Philosophy and religious studies not elsewhere classified". In short, the 2021 "Philosophy" degree category is probably largely comparable but not exactly comparable with the earlier "Philosophy" and "Ethics" degree categories.

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Philosophy, 2021 PhDs (290 included respondents):

• Hispanic or Latino (any race): 9.0%
• Not Hispanic or Latino:
• American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.0%
• Asian: 4.1%
• Black or African American: 2.8%
• White: 81.0%
• More than one race: 3.1%

For comparison, among all PhD recipients (30,830 included respondents):

• Hispanic or Latino (any race): 9.3%
• Not Hispanic or Latino:
• American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.3%
• Asian: 9.8%
• Black or African American: 7.9%
• White: 69.1%
• More than one race: 3.5%

Philosophy PhD recipients approximately match PhD recipients overall in percentage Hispanic or Latino.  Among respondents who are not Hispanic or Latino, Philosophy PhD recipients approximately match PhD recipients overall in percentage who report being more than one race, but compared with PhD recipients overall, Philosophy PhD recipients are substantially less Asian, Black, and (perhaps, though for numbers this small, chance fluctuations can't be ruled out) American Indian or Alaska Native.  Finally -- as these other numbers imply -- philosophy is disproportionately White.

Rewinding 10 years to look at the "Philosophy" and "Ethics" combined category from 2011 (367 included respondents):

• Hispanic or Latino (any race): 4.9%
• Not Hispanic or Latino:
• American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.0%
• Asian: 3.8%
• Black or African American: 2.7%
• White: 87.2%
• More than one race: 1.3%

Here we can see the tendency, as I've noted before, toward increasing percentages of Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and multi-racial philosophy PhD recipients, while the numbers of American Indian/Alaska Native and Black/African American philosophy PhD recipients remains disproportionately low, with little to no increase.

How about field by field? Among the 300 "detailed" fields of study -- NSF's finest-grain division -- Philosophy is the 40th Whitest (by percentage non-Hispanic White). NSF no longer includes categories for French & Italian or German literature, which used to be very White area studies categories, but several European / North American area studies categories remain in the new classification. All are at least as non-Hispanic White as Philosophy. Specifically:

• European history (89.7% non-Hispanic White) [in 2011: 92.7%]
• Classical and ancient studies (88.4%) [in 2011: 92.6%]
• American history (U.S.) (86.3%) [in 2011: 81.5%]
• American literature (U.S.) (85.3%) [in 2011: 82.6%]
• English literature (Britain and commonwealth) (81.6%) [87.9%]

Note than in the humanities "classical" and "ancient" typically refer to ancient Greek and Roman culture and not, for example, ancient China, India, Africa, or the Americas.

Note also: Of course, European history and literature and U.S. history and literature are not exclusively White! However, as with Philosophy, the contributions of people we would now racialize as White tend to be centered.

Other PhD subfields with comparable or higher percentages of non-Hispanic White PhD recipients include music theory and education, meteorology/ecology/geology, animal sciences, and astronomy/astrophysics. Possibly, music theory and music education as typically taught in U.S. PhD programs tend to emphasize the White European and White North American traditions.

If we look at the humanities and social sciences more generally, they tend to be more ethnically and racially diverse than philosophy and the European area studies programs. For example, the social sciences overall are 66.7% non-Hispanic White; foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics overall is 61.3% non-Hispanic White; and general history (without a regional focus) is 71.2% White. The humanities overall is 76.3% non-Hispanic White, but of course that includes substantial numbers focusing in area studies or philosophy.

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I draw two conclusions:

First, the pipeline of PhDs into philosophy in the U.S. remains over 80% non-Hispanic White, despite recent gains in the percentage of Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and multi-racial philosophy PhD recipients.

Second, the moderate increase in ethnic/racial diversity in PhDs -- from 87.2% non-Hispanic White in 2011 to 81.0% in 2021 -- is not part of a general trend toward increasing diversity in European and North America focused "area studies" PhDs, which generally remain about 80-90% non-Hispanic White.

These two observations are consistent with the view that academic philosophy is to some extent, but perhaps to a decreasing extent, still experienced by students as an area studies program focused on a certain aspect of European and North American culture or literature. I wouldn't lean too hard into that possible explanation, though. Probably at least a half-dozen other plausible hypotheses could be constructed to fit the data, and there are some non-area-studies fields, like meteorology/ecology/geology, that are even more proportionately White that Philosophy, for reasons I cannot guess.

The Philosophy Major Continues to Recover and Diversify in the U.S.

The National Center for Education Statistics has released their data on bachelor's degree completions in the U.S. through the 2019-2020 academic year, and it's mostly good news for the philosophy major.

Back in 2017, I noticed that the number of students completing philosophy degrees in the U.S. had plummeted sharply between 2010 and 2016, from 9297 in 2009-2010 to 7507 in 2015-2016, a decline of 19% in just six years. The other large humanities majors (history, English, and foreign languages and literatures) saw similar declines in the period.

A couple of years ago, the trend had started to modestly reverse itself -- and furthermore the philosophy major appeared to be attracting a higher percentage of women and non-White students than previously. The newest data show those trends continuing.

Methodology: The numbers below are all from the NCES IPEDS database, U.S. only, using CIP classification 38.01 for philosophy majors, including both first and second majors, using the NCES gender and race/ethnicity categories. Each year ends at spring term (thus "2010" refers to the 2009-2010 academic year).

Trend since 2010, total number of philosophy bachelor's degrees awarded in the U.S.:

2010: 9274
2011: 9298
2012: 9369
2013: 9427
2014: 8823
2015: 8186
2016: 7491
2017: 7575
2018: 7669
2019: 8075
2020: 8195

As you can see, numbers are up about 9% since their nadir in 2016, though still well below their peak in 2011. (The numbers are slightly different from those in my earlier post, presumably to small post-hoc adjustments in the IPEDS dataset.)

One consequence of the decline, I suspect, was on the job market for philosophy professors, which has been weak since the early 2010s. This has been hard especially on newly graduated PhD students in the field. With the major declining so sharply in the period, it's understandable that administrators wouldn't prioritize the hiring of new philosophy professors. If numbers continue to rise, the job market might correspondingly recover.

Total degrees awarded across all majors has also continued to rise, and thus in percentage terms, philosophy remains well below its peak of almost 0.5% in the late 2000s and early 2010s -- only 0.31% of students, a tiny percentage. Philosophy won't be overtaking psychology or biology in popularity any time soon. Philosophy majors, you are special!

Back in 2017, I also noticed that, going back to the 1980s, the percentage of philosophy majors who were women had remained entirely within the narrow band of 30-34%, despite an increase in women in the undergraduate population overall. However, in the most recent four years, this percentage rose to 39.4%. [ETA 1:48 p.m.: Since 2001, the overall percentage of women among bachelor's recipients across all majors has stayed fairly constant at around 57%.] That might not seem like a big change, but given the consistency of the earlier numbers, it's actually quite remarkable to me. Here's a zoomed-in graph to give you a sense of it:

[click to enlarge and clarify]

The philosophy major is also increasingly racially or ethnically diverse. The percentage of non-Hispanic White students has been falling steadily since NCES began collecting data in 1995, from 81% then to 58% now. Overall, across all majors, 61% percent of bachelor's degree recipients are non-Hispanic White, so the philosophy major is actually now slightly less non-Hispanic White than average. (All the race/ethnicity figures below exclude "nonresident aliens" and "race/ethnicity unknown".)

The particular patterns differ by race/ethnic group.

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders constitute a tiny percentage: about 0.2% of degree recipients both in philosophy and overall since the category was introduced in 2011.

American Indian or Alaskan Native is also a tiny percentage, but unfortunately that percentage has been steadily declining since the mid-2000s, and the group is especially underrepresented in philosophy. According to the U.S. Census, about 0.9% of the U.S. population in that age group identifies as non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaskan Native.

[click to enlarge and clarify]

The following chart displays trends for the other four racial categories used by the NCES. In 2011, "two or more races" was introduced as a category. Also before 2011, the Asian category included "Pacific Islander".

As you can see from the chart, the percentage of Hispanic students graduating with philosophy degrees has surged, from 4.3% in 1995 to 14.4% in 2020. This is approximately representative of a similar surge among Hispanic students across all majors, from 4.8% in 1995 to 15.7% in 2020. Multiracial students have also surged, though it's unclear how much of that surge has to do with changing methodology versus the composition of the student population.

The percentage of philosophy majors identifying as Asian or Black has also increased during the period, but only slowly: From 5.4% and 3.3% respectively in 1995 to 6.8% and 5.6% in 2020. For comparison, across all majors, the numbers rose from 5.4% to 8.1% Asian and 7.6% to 10.2% Black. So, in 2020, Asian and especially Black students are disproportionately underrepresented in the philosophy major. Interestingly, some data from the Higher Education Research Institute suggests that there has been a very recent surge of interest in the philosophy major among Black students just entering college. We'll see if that plays out among Bachelor's degree recipients in a few years.

Disability, Sexuality, Political Leaning, Socio-Economic Background, and Other Demographic Data on Recent Philosophy PhD Recipients

... hot from the Academic Placement and Data Analysis project, run by Carolyn Dicey Jennings. (I'm on the APDA board of directors.) The APDA tracks the job placements of PhD recipients in philosophy from PhD-granting departments in the English-speaking world plus selected programs elsewhere, with over 200 universities represented. Every few years, the APDA also surveys PhD recipients concerning their satisfaction with their PhD program as well as selected demographic characteristics.

The full report is not yet publicly available, but Carolyn Dicey Jennings has reported on placement and satisfaction at Daily Nous. (UCR ranks #3 in student satisfaction rating and #13 in 10-year placement rating, go team!) Marcus Arvan has reported on placement into non-academic careers at Philosophers' Cocoon.

In this post, I'll highlight some of the APDA's demographic results.

Response Rate, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

The APDA contacted over 10,000 recent PhDs (>90% 2006 and later) for whom email addresses were available, achieving about a 10% response rate, with the majority of respondents having received their degrees from programs in the United States. A 10% response rate naturally raises concerns about non-response bias, though low response rates have become common in opinion surveys in general, and recent research suggests that low response rate might be less of a concern than often feared.

APDA results on race, ethnicity, and gender approximately match results on recent philosophy PhDs from other more complete sources like the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, for example as reported here. Philosophy remains disproportionately White, with 82% percent of the APDA's U.S. respondents describing themselves as in that racial/ethnic category and no other (85% of all respondents).

As in other surveys, the APDA results show Black respondents to be enormously underrepresented: 2% of U.S. respondents (also 2% overall), compared to 13% of the general population. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case in 10-15 years, since recent data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) (reported here), shows a dramatic recent increase in interest in the philosophy major among Black students entering college.

The APDA results also show the typical gender skew among PhD recipients in philosophy, with 70% of respondents selecting "man" as their gender, 27% selecting "woman", 2% selecting "non-binary", and 1% selecting "other" (these percentages are identical in the U.S. and overall).

The similarity of these numbers to numbers from other sources makes them less novel than other parts of the APDA report, and for that reason I don't recount them in detail here. The similarity also reassuringly suggests that non-response isn't interacting in a worrisome way with these demographic variables.

Sexuality

Overall, 744 respondents provided information about their sexuality, with 79% selecting "straight", 8% selecting "bisexual", 5% selecting "queer", 3% selecting "gay", 1% selecting "lesbian", and 4% selecting "other". In a separate question, 1.6% of participants identified as transgender. Limiting to the 575 respondents from programs in the U.S., the numbers were overall similar, with 78% selecting "straight", and 1.1% identifying as transgender.

Gallup finds that 5.6% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ. In the HERI database of first-year undergraduates, 92% of students intending to major in philosophy identified as straight and 0.6% identified as transgender.

If the APDA data are accurate and representative, recent philosophy PhDs in the U.S. are much less likely to be straight and non-trans than the general U.S. population or even the population of first-year philosophy majors.

Disability

Good data on disability and philosophy are difficult to find, partly because disability is so various and reported rates of disability can differ markedly with the content and context of the question. In 2013, Shelly Tremain presented evidence of the underrepresentation of disabled people in philosophy and systemic biases against them.

The APDA questionnaire asked:

Which of the following best describes your disability status, treating disability according to the ADA definition: "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity"? Please choose all that apply.

Overall, 67% of participants selected "no known disability" (also 67% among U.S. respondents). Including those with multiple answers:

24% selected "mental health condition (e.g. depression)"

5% selected "long-standing illness or health condition (e.g. cancer)"

3% selected "specific learning disability (e.g. dyslexia)"

2% selected "social/communication impairment (e.g. Asperger's syndrome)"

2% selected "physical impairment or mobility issues (e.g. difficulty using arms)"

1% selected "blind or visual impairment uncorrected by glasses"

1% selected "deaf or serious hearing impairment"

none reported "general learning disability (e.g. Down's syndrome)"

4% selected "other type of disability"

For comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 10% of the non-institutionalized U.S. population aged 18-64 has a disability.

Based on personal experience, anecdotal evidence, and Tremain's and others' work on disability in philosophy, it seems to me unlikely that disabled people are as dramatically overrepresented among philosophy PhD recipients as these numbers might superficially suggest, though certain types of mental health conditions (such as anxiety and depression) might be fairly common. In my view, we remain far from fully understanding the prevalence of disability in academic philosophy, its relation to the prevalence of disability in the wider community, and the disadvantages that disabled philosophers face.

Political Leaning

You will be unsurprised to learn that philosophers lean left. This has been well known since at least Neil Gross's work in the late 2000s. In 2008, based on voter registration data from five U.S. states, I also found that among philosophers registered with a political party, 87% were Democrats and 8% were Republicans (the rest with minor parties), compared to 73% and 22% respectively for professors overall. This was, of course, before the "Tea Party" movement and Trump era, which shifted U.S. academia even more against the Republicans.

The APDA added a new question in 2021 concerning political leaning. Among 769 respondents, 50% selected "very liberal", 33% selected "liberal", 12% selected "moderate", 3% selected "conservative", and 1% selected "very conservative". Considering only the 596 respondents from U.S. programs, 83% selected liberal or very liberal, 12% selected moderate, and 5% selected conservative or very conservative.

One percent very conservative! Could this be representative? It might be worth checking out Uwe Peters' interesting discussion of hostility to conservatives in philosophy.

I worry that there's a vicious circle here: Academia, especially the humanities and social sciences, shifts left -- right-leaning politicians criticize and defund academic work, especially in the humanities and social sciences -- people in the humanities and social sciences understandably react by associating even more with the left -- and so forth.

Socio-Economic Background

The APDA also asks a few interesting questions about socio-economic background.

One is "What was your family's socioeconomic status (SES) growing up?" Overall, 8% selected "lower", 24% "lower middle", 36% "middle", 28% "upper middle", and 3% "upper". Among respondents from U.S. programs, 32% selected lower or lower middle, 35% selected middle, and 33% selected upper middle or upper.

This makes it sounds like philosophers hail from a fairly ordinary sample of families. However, regarding parental education, the story is very different. When asked "What is the highest education level obtained by at least one of your parents/guardians?" 78% reported bachelor's degree or higher (80% of respondents from U.S. institutions), and 56% reported that at least one parent had an advanced degree. Among people born in the United States overall, 36% of the population aged 25 and over have a bachelor's degree.

If take these data at face value, we might conclude that philosophers tend to hail from families of the overeducated and underpaid. Perhaps that's so. Or perhaps respondents are erring toward the low side in reporting the SES of their families of origin.

Lots more interesting data in the full report! Keep an eye out for a publicly available version before too long.

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 Related:

"The Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Diversity of Philosophy Students and Faculty in the United States: Recent Data from Several Sources", Eric Schwitzgebel, Liam Kofi Bright, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Morgan Thompson, and Eric Winsberg. The Philosopher's Magazine (2021).

"The Philosophy Major Is Back, Now with More Women" (Sep 2, 2021).

"Diversity and Equity in Recruitment and Retention", Sherri Conklin, Gregory Peterson, Michael Rea, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Nicole Hassoun. Blog of the APA (Jun 7, 2021)

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image adapted from here