Growth in public library use from 1995 to 2009 was accompanied by an increase in library expenditures. The 2018 expenditure level reflects a near-complete return to the 2009 peak level after several years of decline and then stasis in library spending.

From 1987 to 2018, the nation’s colleges and universities conferred the largest share of advanced degrees in the humanities on students of English language and literature. For most of this time period, English awarded more than twice as many master’s degrees as the next…

While the number of advanced humanities degrees substantially recovered from the declines of the 1970s and early 1980s (even taking into account recent declines in the number of master’s degrees), the field’s share of all degrees completed at the master’s and doctoral…

Recent commentaries have suggested that the gap in earnings between the humanities and other fields narrows with additional work experience. To provide a clearer picture of the differences over time, the following item compares the earnings of college graduates in the…

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gathers a wealth of data on the education-related investments and outcomes of its member nations, permitting comparisons among countries regarding the share of degrees earned in various academic fields…

In addition to making a wide variety of reading, audio, video, reference, and archival materials available to children and adults , public libraries nationwide have been developing programs to enhance their value to the community. As the Institute of Museum and Library…

A substantial number of postsecondary students encounter the humanities at the community-college level—as students pursuing terminal certificates and degrees, or as students taking courses to fulfill requirements for four-year programs. In 2018, the number of community…

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Teacher and Principal Survey provides a demographic snapshot of the primary- and secondary-school teachers working in the nation’s public and private schools. The 2017–2018 data reveal that humanities teachers tend to be white…

The distribution of humanities degree completions among disciplines has changed over the years, as new disciplines emerged and (in recent years) the number of degrees conferred in some of the larger disciplines started to fall.

Libraries are a significant component of the humanities infrastructure. While some scientific knowledge can become quickly outdated, much humanistic knowledge does not, and with their holdings of decades’—and in some cases centuries’—worth of literature, scholarship…