The STEM disciplines haven’t yet destroyed the place of the humanities in academia: a new survey shows that humanities departments nationwide are remarkably stable.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has the story:

Survey finds stability in humanities departments

Maybe the sky didn’t fall on the humanities after all.

The new edition of “The Humanities Indicators,” being released today by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, suggests much more stability in humanities departments between 2007-8 and 2012-13 than is widely assumed to be the case. The findings come from surveys of humanities departments at four-year colleges and universities. Findings suggest only marginal shifts in the number of faculty slots and departments. (The indicators are a project designed to provide regular, reliable data on the state of the humanities.)

While that stability might cheer advocates for humanities programs, stability at a minimal level also seems to have been the case with regard to the digital humanities and evaluation of digital work for tenure and promotion. Despite considerable enthusiasm among many faculty members about digital humanities, the data show relatively few formal programs or policies.

Among the key findings related to departmental offerings and faculty positions:

• Across humanities disciplines, the number of departments was stable, with only modest declines in some fields. “A relatively small number of departments that had granted degrees in 2007-8 were no longer offering degrees in the subject five years later,” the report says. Declines ranged from 1 (out of 19) in history of science to 40 (out of more than 1,250) in languages and literatures other than English. In some cases (about 6 percent), departments were not eliminated but they are no longer offering all the degrees they offered.
• The number of faculty members was relatively unchanged.
• A majority of faculty members — relatively similar to the share in 2007-8 — were on the tenure track (or tenured). Less than a third of faculty members were employed part-time — again not much difference.
• Full-time faculty members (not all of whom are on the tenure track) taught about three-fourths of the students taking introductory courses, and 86 percent of non-introductory courses.