Job Satisfaction of Humanities Ph.D. Recipients
- Humanities Ph.D. recipients had job satisfaction levels similar to their counterparts in several other major fields, with almost 88% of all humanities Ph.D.’s reporting they were satisfied with their jobs in 2015 (Indicator III-26a). The share of all Ph.D.’s reporting satisfaction was 91%.
- While the job satisfaction rate among humanities Ph.D.’s employed in academia was the same as that for Ph.D.’s generally (approximately 91%), the rate among those employed outside academia was lower by 12 percentage points (80% for humanities Ph.D.’s, compared to 92% for all fields combined). The share of humanities Ph.D.’s employed outside the academy who expressed satisfaction was at least nine percentage points smaller than that found in every other major academic field.
* The analysis excludes holders of the D.D.S., D.V.M., M.D., and other nonresearch degrees. A doctorate degree holder is considered employed in academia if he or she works for a two- or four-year college/university, medical school, or university research institute in any capacity.
Source: National Science Foundation, 2015 National Survey of College Graduates. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
Conducted every two years, the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) gathers detailed education, occupation, and earnings information from a sample of individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those identified via the American Community Survey as holders of a baccalaureate degree. The National Science Foundation makes NSCG data available to researchers and the general public via downloadable data files and its online data analysis tool, SESTAT. Given the size of the NSCG sample, reliable estimates are available only for broad academic fields. For the NSCG disciplinary categories included in each of the field-of-degree categories employed by the Humanities Indicators, see the provided crosswalk. The categories for level of satisfaction in the survey were “very satisfied,” “somewhat satisfied,” “somewhat dissatisfied,” and “very dissatisfied.”
