Each year the US government conducts the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). The survey is filled out by individual recipients of doctorates at US institutions. The results appear annually as Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report and are also available electronically through the National Science Foundation's Web site WebCASPAR (caspar.nsf.gov). This reports presents some of the latest survey's data of interest to those in the modern language fields. For the full results of the survey, see Hoffer.

Figure 1 shows the number of doctorates in foreign languages and literatures, English and American language and literature, language and literature (the modern languages combined), and the humanities as a whole between 1958 and 2003. While all the lines in the figure show an increase from 1958 to 1973, a drop from 1973 through the mid-1980s, and an increase beginning in the late 1980s, humanities degrees in general have since the late 1980s rebounded more vigorously than degrees in language and literature. Figure 1 should be compared to figure 2, which shows the number of doctorates conferred in all fields from 1958 to 2003. While the shape of this line is similar to those in figure 1, doctorate conferrals in all fields only slow or drop off very slightly. The more distinct drop in language and literature PhDs beginning in the early 1970s can be attributed, in part, to the widely discussed PhD employment crisis, which emerged at the 1969 MLA convention and has been a preoccupying concern ever since.

Figure 3 shows the number of doctorates in the humanities and in language and literature per one hundred doctorates in all fields from 1958 to 2003. From this figure, we can see that since 1958 the humanities' and language and literature's share of all doctorates has declined noticeably but not precipitously, reaching highs in 1960 and 1973 and a low in the late 1980s.

Figures 4 and 5 show 2002-03 doctorate recipients' reported employment. As the questionnaire is worded, "definite employment" at the time of graduation could be a tenure- or nontenure-track position or a job in a sector other than higher education. For the period between 1984 and 2003 about half of any given year's graduates report having definite employment at the time of graduation. For 2003 the figures are 53.2% for English and 56.3% for foreign languages. Across the twenty years the SED data on doctorate recipients with definite employment show a degree of variation ranging from a low of 44.0% in 1997 to a high of 60.3% in 1989 for English and a low of 47.5% in 1998 to a high of 58.7% in 2000 for foreign languages.

Figure 6 illustrates that the increasing number of PhDs granted since 1958 has been most dramatically represented in women's greater access to graduate study. In 1958 only 991 of 8,773 PhDs in all fields, or 11.3%, were granted to women. By 2003 this number had risen to 18,402 of 40,710 doctorates, or 45%. This represents a difference of 1,757% in the number of PhDs granted to women yearly. The number of PhDs granted to men in 2003 was only 185% greater than in 1958. As figure 7 shows, the increase in this period in PhDs granted to women in the humanities is similarly striking: in 1958, 202 PhDs were granted to women in the humanities, while 2,745 such degrees were conferred in 2003. In fact, women have now surpassed men in earning PhDs in the humanities.

Table 1 outlines characteristics of recipients of 2003 doctorates in language and literature. Of 929 recipients in English, 40% were men, 59.8% women. Of 622 recipients in foreign languages, 39.2% were men, 60.5% women. US citizens comprised 85.6% of English and 62.2% of foreign language doctorates. Those on permanent and temporary visas together made up 10.5% of English and 35.2% of foreign language doctorates. 64.1% of English doctorate recipients also held a bachelor's in the same field, while only 46.5% of foreign language recipients did. In both English and foreign languages, the median times from receipt of the bachelor's to receipt of the doctorate were 11 years (total) and 9 years (enrolled).

Ten percent of English and 8.4% of foreign language recipients planned some form of postdoctoral study; 6.4% of English and 4.3% of foreign language recipients had definite plans for postdoctoral study. 80.8% of English and 84.9% of foreign language respondents indicated that they intended to enter a particular type of postgraduation employment; 53.2% of English and 56.3% of foreign language respondents had definite employment. 9.1% of English and 6.8% of foreign language respondents indicated that their postgraduation plans were unknown. (The percentages for those who planned postdoctoral study, those who intended postgraduation employment, and those whose plans were unknown sum to 100, with allowance for rounding.)

Of those recipients whose postgraduation employment was definite, teaching was the primary employment activity of 82.7% in English and 84.3% in foreign language. The secondary activity of 55.9% in English and 63.8% in foreign languages was research and development, a clear indication that while majorities of these doctorate recipients considered research a significant component of their employment, teaching remained the primary anticipated responsibility. In English and foreign languages, the highest percentages of definite employment were in the Middle Atlantic (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania), East North Central (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin), and South Atlantic (Delaware, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia).

Table 2 outlines data for 2003 degree recipients' citizenship, race, and ethnicity. A total of 18% of the 1,280 respondents in language and literature who were US citizens or held permanent visas identified with a category of race or ethnicity other than white (excluding other/race unknown). 77.6% of this number identified as white. We can compare these 2003 SED data to data available on WebCASPAR for 1973 to 2003, a summary of which is presented in table 3.¹ Over the three decades these WebCASPAR data represent, a total of 2.4% of all English and literature and 1.7% of all foreign language doctorates were granted to recipients identifying themselves as black. In all disciplines, black recipients claimed 3.7% of doctorates in this period. In 2003, these percentages were 4.5% for English, 2.1% for foreign languages, and 5.2% for all disciplines. The only nonwhite category of race or ethnicity in which foreign languages fare better than English is, not surprisingly, Hispanic, the only one that strongly implies a first language other than English. Among 1973-2003 graduates, Hispanic recipients account for 12.2% of foreign language, 1.8% of English, and 2.9% of all doctorates. For 2003, these numbers are 23.8% for foreign languages, 4.2% for English, and 5.4% for all disciplines. Despite years of good intentions on the part of many members of the profession, the percentages of doctorate recipients of color remain depressingly low.