<p>What fields are most heavily saturated for PhD’s and which ones are the least?</p>
<p>I’ve heard that many humanities fields like english and classics are very saturated</p>
<p>They aren’t “saturated” in terms of there being literally thousands and thousands of PhDs in the Humanities. It is a matter of supply and demand. Universities are cutting back Classics and English departments and there isn’t a need for the PhDs that are there already, it seems. I could be wrong. For example, at Brown last year, in the Modern Culture and Media department, they admitted only 4 Phd candidates. On the other hand, there took a lot more in departments like Biology, Econ, Poli Sci etc.</p>
<p>It is hard getting a Classics Phd. What is involved is a lot of work and even before that, a lot of preparation in terms of languages etc. I would think that because of this, there aren’t a whole lot of PhDs…but the demand is even less, I guess. Just imho.</p>
<p>Perhaps saturation could be measured by competition for spots in the programs. If a program gets 20 fold more applications than they accept, it is 10 fold more saturated than a program that accepts half of its applicants. If this criteria for saturation is accurate than the humanities are surely orders of magnitude more saturated than biological sciences. This isn’t really helpful.</p>
<p>You can’t go by acceptance rates for graduate programs. One of the acknowledged problems in academia right now is that many graduate programs - especially in the humanities - are accepting a lot more doctoral students than there are jobs for those doctoral students, for various reasons. One, having doctoral students in a doctoral program makes your university look good; two, the professors may want to engage in the generative process that is mentoring and producing scholars; and three, they may need students to teach their introductory undergrad courses and graduate students are cheaper than adding tenure lines and even are cheaper than hiring adjuncts in some cases.</p>
<p>The problem then is that when those doctoral students graduate with their PhDs, they don’t necessarily have tenure-track positions waiting for them. It’s become even worse with the economy - tenure lines are being eliminated, there are hiring freezes, and administrators are taking advantage of the recession to “show” departments that they can actually operate with just 6 professors instead of the 11 they think (know) that they need to function properly. Lots of classes are being taught by adjuncts. I’ve heard friends in English doctoral programs say that there are instances of 200 applications being submitted for 1 tt position for an English literature professor.</p>
<p>I think it’s worse in the humanities not necessarily because the saturation is worse, but because of the more limited options for humanities scholars. In the sciences and business, there may be many more doctoral students graduated than there are tt positions for them - but a substantial number of graduates go on to industry jobs and other non-academic positions and so it’s less noticeable and less of a problem for those who DO want to stay in academia. This also happens, but to a lesser extent, in the social sciences and so we say there is also a saturation there. But in humanities it is perceived that there is nothing else that an English or history or philosophy PhD can do with that degree (perceived) and then I also think that humanities scholars are less likely to <em>want</em> to leave academia compared with their colleagues in the sciences, business, and the social sciences.</p>