Comments on: Trends in Anthropology

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Social Science Doctorates

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:04:17 +0000

[...] Via Inside Higher Ed I learned of a new government report on “U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century.” This report updates the Ph.D. section of the data I discussed earlier in a post entitled “Trends in Anthropology,” providing the latest data on how many Anthropology degrees have been served up by American Universities since the 1920s. I extracted the social science data from the appendix and posted it on Google Docs, in case anyone is interested. Not much to say except that there are an awful lot of people getting Anthropology Ph.D.s! [...]

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By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Guns, Germs and Steel Links

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 12:31:48 +0000

[...] is not because we are “jealous” of other disciplines (in fact, anthropology is doing better than ever before), it is because we are all too aware of our own history a [...]

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By: Areki

Areki — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 18:18:20 +0000

It is at least mildly humorous, if not patently hilarious that I fell victim to the same error of visual calibration between the data pt. at 1975 and at 2000 that I queried the initial posting on, with respect to reading the graph for 1975 (of course, I started by noting that I myself was vaguely innumerate, and the fact that the pt. at 75 looking quite a bit lower than that at 2000 being, yes, subjective, it now seems being quite to the point). but the line ‘there has been little change in the number of PhDs’ awarded still rankles even with your more-than-appropriate taking me to task for not consulting the details of the original article which you kindly provided. Perhaps we just read the numbers differently, but while there are some startling and curious short term spikes and valleys (or so I read them) in annual graduation rates which yield relatively largely equivalent by-decade medians, taken from year to year, the overall trend yields an annual median increase which strikes me as especially significant when you think about these numbers in terms of practicing once-occurrent individuals out there in their research fields all clamoring for sub-discipline specifiic jobs, publications & cetera. Perhaps, more interestingly, this trend (if there is one) could be considered in terms of its impact on the primary intellectual knowledge work of practitioners from the previously relatively isolated romantic-ish fieldworkers to those of us now engaged in various scholarly networks bearing on the research itself and not merely its dissemination. Something else to look at, I suppose, would be the annual total of living, breathing, practicing AAA card-carrying anthropologists. My guess is that that number too has going up over the years. Perhaps dramatically. Perhaps not. It’s an empire(ical) question, right. Of course those folks come from somewhere…

Thanks, by the bye, for your response.

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By: Kerim

Kerim — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 01:28:30 +0000

I agree I may be innumerate, but there were 269 Cultural Ph.D.s in 1975. Not 50. 58 was the number of degrees in Biology. And there were 313 Cultural Ph.D.s in 1976.

I don’t see a big difference between 313 and 316.

Now it is true that there was a big growth in the 60s and early 70s, as there was in the number of BAs. But then there was also a huge growth in the entire university system in the US at that time. It is because of this that I don’t make much of the earlier growth, although I don’t have the data to fine-tune how anthropology might related to this larger growth or that of other fields.

I was fairly timid about making any conclusions from these numbers, but if I was pressed I would say that the only reason there hasn’t been an equal surge in the number of anthropolgy jobs is because of the increased reliance on adjunct and part-time faculty – not because of lack of demand.

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By: Areki

Areki — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 19:01:57 +0000

Kerim,

I don’t exactly know how to put this diplomatically but as a vaguely innumerate social scientist with a hard core math casse of maths envy, it does strike me that your analysis:

“The results are interesting… that while there has been little change in the number of Ph.D.s, there has been astronomical growth in the number of B.A. degrees in Anthropology”

… is worse than misleading. Obviously you were going with the aesthetic fact that the line for total PhDs awarded only wobbles a bit up over the years (What happened in 1995!?!), but if you think about the numbers for a moment, much less the economies of scale involved surely you would agree that the growth of the anthro PhD market from 50 or so a year in 1975 (you don’t give the number) to 316 isn’t merely significant. Ginourmous is a more analytically adequate term. Meanwhile, while we might quible whether the positive change from 1991-1992 to 2001-2002, 228 to 316, is merely enormous or also deserves some sort of heightened language to capture the sound of a pontential market glut, again the merely modest scholarly term in statistics would likely be… “significant”. Indeed, with respect to the number of professors necessary to illuminate the anthro student lightbulb, the BA graph and its promise of disciplinary hope may too be at least partially visual and chimerical.

For instance, if someone took a third of your salary/grant/fellowship away, you’d be rather sour faced I imagine, or if they added same, rather ebullient. Unless, perhaps, you’re a model of stoicism and otherwordly comportment, mental equipoise & cetera.

In any event, it looks like our field is expanding in all dimensions and the question is one of evaluating the variable rates of expansion.

Best statistical wishes and all that.

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