• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

American Academy of Arts and Sciences Launches Humanities Indicators Prototype

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 January 2009, 09:00 CST

www.HumanitiesIndicators.org

Benchmarking the Humanities in America

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Academy of Arts and Sciences today unveiled the Humanities Indicators, a prototype set of statistical data about the humanities in the United States. The new on-line resource is available at www.HumanitiesIndicators.org.

Organized in collaboration with a consortium of national humanities organizations, the Humanities Indicators are the first effort to provide scholars, policymakers and the public with a comprehensive picture of the state of the humanities, from primary to higher education to public humanities activities. The collection of empirical data is modeled after the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators and creates reliable benchmarks to guide future analysis of the state of the humanities. Without data, it is impossible to assess the effectiveness, impact, and needs of the humanities.

The Academy project collected and analyzed data from existing sources to compile a prototype set of 74 indicators and more than 200 tables and charts, accompanied by interpretive essays covering five broad subject areas. The Indicators will be updated as new information becomes available, including data from a survey administered last year to approximately 1,500 college and university humanities departments. The Academy views the Indicators as a prototype for a much-needed national system of humanities data collection.

"Until now the nation has lacked a broad-based, quantitative analysis of the status of the humanities in the United States," said Leslie Berlowitz, chief executive officer of the American Academy and project co-director. "We need more reliable empirical data about what is being taught in the humanities, how they are funded, the size of the workforce, and public attitudes toward the field. The Humanities Indicators are an important step in closing that fundamental knowledge gap. They will help researchers and policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, humanities councils and others answer basic questions about the humanities, track trends, diagnose problems, and formulate appropriate interventions."

Among the organizations collaborating with the Academy on the effort are the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Academy of Religion, the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, Association of American Universities, the College Art Association, the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the Linguistic Society of America, the Modern Language Association and the National Humanities Alliance.

Almost a decade ago, Academy Fellows Steven Marcus, Jonathan Cole, Robert Solow, and Francis Oakley joined Berlowitz in recognizing the need for improved data on the humanities and spearheaded the Academy's efforts to establish a data collection system. Other leading humanists, including Patricia Meyer Spacks, Denis Donoghue, Norman Bradburn, Pauline Yu, Arnita Jones, and Rosemary Feal helped guide the project.

The need for and potential value of the Humanities Indicators was described in the Academy's 2002 report, Making the Humanities Count: The Importance of Data (available at: http://www.amacad.org/projects/humanities.aspx).

"The humanities community has suffered from a protracted case of data deprivation, especially in comparison with science and engineering," said Oakley, co-chair of the Academy's Initiative for the Humanities and Culture and President Emeritus of both Williams College and the American Council of Learned Societies. "We know that public support of the humanities depends on accurate data. The Indicators prototype is the start of an infrastructure that will broadly support policy research in the humanities."

The Academy's Initiative for the Humanities and Culture provides a framework for examining the significance of the humanities in our national culture. It is a necessary backbone for developing adequate resources and informed policies to ensure the continued growth and health of the humanities. The Academy's work in this area has received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Teagle Foundation, and the Sara Lee Foundation. For more information on the Initiative, see http://www.amacad.org/projects/humanities.aspx.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. Beyond its work in humanities and culture, current Academy research focuses on: science and global security; social policy; and education. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy's work is advanced by its 4,600 elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business and public affairs from around the world. (www.amacad.org)

What Do the Humanities Indicators Reveal?

A Few Examples

• Adult literacy in the U.S. is polarized. Among Western industrialized nations, we rank near the top in the percentage of highly literate adults (21%) but also near the top in the proportion who are functionally illiterate (also 21%).

• Public concern about K-12 teacher qualifications has focused mainly on math and science, but data reveal that the humanities fields suffer an even more glaring dearth of well-prepared teachers. In 2000, the percentage of middle (29%) and high school (37.5%) students taught by a highly qualified history teacher was lower than for any other major subject area. The definition of "highly qualified" is a teacher who has certification and a post-secondary degree in the subject they teach.

• Humanities faculty are the most poorly paid. They also have a higher proportion of part-time, non-tenured positions compared to their counterparts in the sciences and engineering. But almost half of humanities faculty indicate that they are "very satisfied" with their jobs overall.

• Since the early 1970s, the number of Americans who support the banning of books from the public library because they espouse atheism, extreme militarism, communism, or homosexuality decreased by at least 11 percentage points, although 26% to 34% of the public still support banning some type of books. In the case of books advocating homosexuality, the decline was a particularly significant 20 percentage points.

• Recent federal legislation identifies certain languages as "critical need languages" (Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, and Uzbek, among others), but the data show these languages are rarely studied in colleges and universities. At the same time, there has been a substantial increase in the number of students studying Chinese.

• Charitable giving to arts and cultural organizations grew between the mid-1990s and early 2000s before leveling off. But little of public or private sector funding for the humanities goes to academic research. This trend undermines both academia and the public since public institutions rely on humanities scholars to provide much of the knowledge on which their activities are based.

• The number of American adults who read at least one book in the previous 12 months decreased from 61% to 57% in the decade between the early 1990s and the early 2000s. The greatest rate of decline (approximately 15%) occurred among 18-to-24-year-olds.

SOURCE American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Source: PR Newswire

More News in this Category