Data on art history-related Ph.D.’s conferred
over time were obtained from the National Center for Education
Statistics’ (NCES) online Integrated Postsecondary Education Data
System (IPEDS). As explained on the IPEDS web site (
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/),
"The IPEDS system is built
around a series of interrelated surveys to collect
institution-level data in such areas as enrollments, program
completions, faculty, staff, and finances." By law, all
institutions of higher education wishing to participate in any
Federal financial assistance programs must complete all IPEDS
surveys each year, making IPEDS the most comprehensive source of
statistical data about postsecondary education in the United
States.
The system contains data on degrees awarded
(by institution and by instructional program) going back to the
1979-80 academic year. Using the IPEDS system, it was possible to
extract year-by-year data on the number of art history-related
Ph.D.’s awarded at each institution in each academic year from
1979-80 through 2003-04. (The only exceptions were for the academic
years 1980-81, 1981-82, 1982-83, and 1998-99, years during which
data were not collected.)
Data were compiled using two different
strategies and then cross-checked for consistency. The first method
involved extracting information directly from IPEDS, using NCES’
online "Dataset Cutting Tool" at
http://nces.ed.gov/ipedspas/. To access the Dataset Cutting
Tool, public users must log on to the system using the "Guest
Level" access link. After agreeing to the terms of the NCES Data
User Agreement, users are redirected to a web page that allows
access to the Dataset Cutting Tool. Users then select, from a
series of menus, various options that allow a customized data set
to be created that contains specific data of interest to the user.
The following procedure was used to extract year-by-year data for
Ph.D.’s awarded in the field of art history:
- Under "Select Institutions," "2004" was selected in order to establish the set of
schools from which data were to be extracted. The "2004" set
consists of all schools for which records existed in the IPEDS
database in 2004. Other years could be selected, for example, if
the user wished to examine data only from schools that were
represented in the 1980 IPEDS database.
- Next, the option "Select schools using specific criteria" was selected,
since not all schools confer doctoral degrees; this allows such
schools to be excluded from the analysis (in a subsequent step),
which speeds up the extraction of data.
- To see data for degree completions, "collection year" must be selected under the option
labeled "View data by."
- On the next page, the range of schools to be included in the
analysis can be restricted as needed for the purpose of the
research. For this study, it was sufficient to select the two
categories labeled "Doctoral/Research Universities-Extensive" and "Doctoral/Research Universities-Intensive" under the
"Carnegie classification" option in order to narrow the universe of
schools to those relevant to this inquiry.
- The next page shows the list of specific schools that were
selected based on the school inclusion criteria just chosen.
- The next page allows the user to select the "collection year"
from which the data should be pulled. Selecting "04," for example, selects the 2003-04 academic
year.
- Once a collection year was selected, the choice labeled "Completions" was selected under the "Survey" option.
This pulls information from the database concerning degrees
awarded.
- On the next page, the option "Awards/degrees conferred by program (CIP)" was
selected, which allows degrees awarded to be viewed by specific
programmatic categories such as "Art history, criticism and
conservation."
- On the next page, the user may select the specific
instructional programs for which data should be pulled. For this
study, the following programmatic categories (CIP codes) were
selected:
-
Art History, Criticism and Conservation (CIP code
50.0703)
-
Fine Arts and Arts Studies, General (CIP code
50.0701)
-
Fine Arts and Arts Studies, Other (CIP code
50.0799)
-
Film/Cinema Studies (CIP code 50.0601)
-
Historic Preservation and Conservation (CIP code
30.1201)
-
Historic Preservation and Conservation, Other (CIP code
30.1209)
-
Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CIP code
30.1301)
-
Museology/Museum Studies (CIP code 30.1401)
(It should be noted that Ph.D.’s awarded in
areas such as Architecture and Archaeology were not included in our
analyses.)
- Under "Award Level code," "Doctor’s degree" was selected.
- Under "First or Second Major," "First major" was selected.
- Under "List of variables," "Grand total men," "Grand total women," and "Grand total" were selected. (For most years, "Grand
total" was not available as a category, so "Grand total men" and
"Grand total women" had to aggregated in order to come up with a
grand total.)
- On the next page, a summary of the requested data file is
provided, and the user is given the option to
download the data.
The above procedure was replicated for each
academic year for which data were available between 1979-80 and
2003-04. The resulting data files were then merged, so that trends
could be examined in the awarding of art history-related Ph.D.’s
over time.
The second method used to compile these trend
data was to collect lists of institutions known to have Ph.D.
programs in art history (and/or related areas). One list of such
institutions was obtained from the College Art Association; a
second list was obtained from the web site,
www.gradschools.com.
Based on the results obtained from the IPEDS analyses, a third list
was compiled consisting of all institutions that appeared in the
IPEDS data files as having awarded art history-related doctoral
degrees between 1979 and 2004. These three lists were combined into
a master list, which was then provided to a researcher at NCES, who
ran a second complete set of analyses focusing strictly on the
institutions represented in the merged list. His analyses almost
exactly matched the earlier analyses we had run using IPEDS. The
results shown in this research report are taken from the analyses
conducted by the NCES researcher, based on the list of academic
institutions we provided.
