Profile of Folklore Departments (HDS 3)

All the counts, percentages, and averages included in the narrative below are estimates generated from data collected for the third round of the Humanities Department Survey (HDS 3).

Please note that even though the survey response rate for folklore departments was 83%, due to the relatively small number of departments (and evidence of substantial variation among them), the findings for this discipline should be interpreted with caution. Many of the estimates have a substantial margin of error associated with them. See the data tables in Part B of the Appendix for details. (For more on how to interpret the results, see the Introduction in the complete profile for this discipline.)

Folklore departments were first included in the 2012 survey.2 Of the departments that granted degrees in fall 2012, 12 still did so in fall 2017.

Download the full profile (PDF) or see the the main HDS 3 report.

Findings and Trends

Students

Among folklore departments that were granting degrees in 2012, total enrollment in undergraduate courses was 5,880 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 490.1 per department).2
On average, folklore departments awarded six bachelor’s degrees per department in the 2016–17 academic year. Students also completed an average of 12.3 minors per department.
Total enrollment in graduate-level folklore courses was 215 in fall 2017 (with an average enrollment of 17.9 per department). The average number of students pursuing an advanced degree in folklore was six per department that granted such degrees.

Faculty

Folklore departments employed 50 full- or part-time faculty members in fall 2017, with an average of 4.1 faculty members per department. Seventy-eight percent of these faculty were either tenured or on the tenure track, and 9% were employed part-time.
Thirty-five percent of folklore departments hired a new permanent faculty member for the start of the 2017–18 academic year, and 20% of the departments had a faculty member come up for tenure in the previous two years.
Women constituted 59% of the faculty members in folklore departments in fall 2017. Fifty-seven percent of tenured faculty members were women, compared to 71% of faculty members on the tenure track and 55% of those off the tenure track.

Supporting Student Careers

Forty-two percent of folklore departments rated the career services programs at their college or university “good” or “very good” for their students. None of them rated the services “poor” or “very poor.”

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The Humanities Indicators and Departmental Survey have been made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Endnotes

1All estimates in this profile are for the population of departments granting degrees in 2012 that were still doing so in 2017. The survey was able to detect departments that ceased to grant degrees between 2012 and 2017, but not any departments that may have begun granting degrees during that period.
2Students who enrolled in more than one course in the discipline are counted in each course in which they enrolled. The same is true for the graduate course enrollment values given below. Medians for all “per department” quantities mentioned in this section are available in the corresponding data tables (please see the Appendix, Part B).

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