Between 1974 and 2005, according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 3.11 percent of all history PhDs went to Chicano/Latinos. During that time period, their annual share started out at a low of 0.87 percent in 1974 and then peaked at 5.26 percent in 2001. Between 2002 and 2005, the average was that Chicano/Latinos earned 4.5 percent of the history PhDs. These partial gains were spread quite unevenly from one university to the next.
The entries in the below table are sorted first by the percentage of history PhDs awarded to Chicano/Latinos at a particular school, from 1974 to 2005. The universities that awarded zero percent of their history PhDs to Chicano/Latinos between 1974 and 2005 are sorted by the total number of history PhDs they awarded during this time period. The first forty-seven universities listed in the left column, through University of Massachusetts at Amherst, were above average. The remaining one hundred and twenty universities, starting with University of Illinois at Chicago, were below average in the percentage of history PhDs they have awarded to Chicano/Latinos.
These figures should be read with some caution, since a small percentage of these doctorates were probably self-reported as history PhDs, when in fact they were not awarded by a history department.
For me, this data raises several questions: Why has the percentage of history PhDs being earned by Chicano/Latinos fallen since 2001? What is the ideal percentage? Are Chicano/Latino graduate students in history avoiding certain schools and favoring others? What are the history departments in this list doing to recruit Chicano/Latino graduate students? What are they doing that repels Chicano/Latino graduate students? How much of a correlation is there between history departments with faculty who are either Chicano/Latino and/or who specialize Chicano/Latino history and the percentage of history PhDs they award to Chicano/Latino graduate students?
Labels: diversity, Minorities, PhDinHistory, Programs
PhDinHistory on 10/17/2007 12:52 PM:
I am not sure I understand your distinction between Chicano/Latino history and Chicano/Latino studies. My data is based on the Federal Survey of Earned Doctorates, which is something that every doctoral recipient is supposed to fill out around the time of graduation. So I would say my data is completely self-identified.
The data I have access contains a category for "Area and Ethnic Studies," but not for "Chicano/Latino Studies" by itself. Still, the data shows that 114 of the individuals who earned a PhD in Area or Ethnic Studies since 1973 were Hispanic. This pales in comparison, however, to the 796 Chicano/Latinos have earned PhDs in history since 1973.
Are you asking whether we have enough people in the history profession doing Chicano/Latino history, as well as whether enough of those people are Chicano/Latino themselves? If so, what would be your basis for comparison?
Unknown on 10/17/2007 3:07 PM:
That is what I'm asking -- sorry I muddied the waters by confusing "studies" with "history." My point of comparison would be with African-American history in particular as compared with total number of African-Americans earning doctorates in history. A comparison could also be made in the same fashion with gender history.
Lots of good questions. Do you have data on how many graduate students in Chicano/Latino studies self-identify as Chicano/Latino? If so, how does that percentage compare with other fields of study relating to groups largely on U.S. soil, such as African American Studies or Gender Studies?
Data like this might give us some idea of whether we're seeing a side effect of a leveling-out of degrees in Chicano/Latino studies, or whether your data suggests a primarily ethnicity-based problem.