Report: ATS Faculty Numbers

[trinitymatthew]

Some considering theological and religious studies doctoral programs might be interested in this recent study of Association of Theological Schools (ATS) faculty. Using 2014-2015 ATS faculty data, it lists the top 25 universities and schools that have conferred doctoral degrees on current ATS faculty. There's no commentary on the strengths of the various programs, simply a ranking by numbers of ATS faculty. But these figures do provide some useful insight into where the majority of faculty have studied, and thus which programs see its graduates hired. Included for comparison are the top 25 from 2001. The current 25 schools account for 51% of earned doctorates among ATS faculty. The remaining 49% (not listed) come from 395 additional schools.

Here's the top 15:

 1 Princeton Theological Seminary

2 Harvard University

3 University of Toronto (including TST schools)

4 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

5 University of Chicago

6 Fuller Theological Seminary

7 Yale University

8 Emory University and Candler School of Theology

9 Roman Schools (Pontifical Gregorian has most with 35)

10 Union Theological Seminary (53) and Columbia University (31)

11 Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

12 Vanderbilt University

13 Duke University and Divinity School

14 Catholic University of America

15 Drew University 

The whole report is here: http://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/publications-presentations/documents/tenure-and-other-faculty-facts-part-2.pdf

 

[Kuriakos]

It would be a lot more useful to look at placement numbers the last 5-10 years and percent of graduates employed in TT positions. Places like Fuller (where I received my MA), would plummet dramatically. Several of these are programs that don't fund and churn out massive numbers of PhDs. DTS and SBTS have hundreds of PhD students. Most of them are not getting academic jobs. 

[Wantingtogetinsomewhere]

Thanks for the data and the link.

The comparison between 2001 and 2015 is interesting. That's a huge jump for Toronto, SBTS, and Fuller. But as Kuriakos said, the baptist programs, DTS, and Fuller have hundreds of PhD students between them. The numbers are probably also skewed by the fact that the baptist programs tend to hire their own. A cursory look through their faculty pages reveals a high percentage of baptist PhDs. Not to knock it--I get it, they want to ensure the success of their own and want to uphold a certain culture--but their graduates are likely not as spread out across programs like many others on the list. 

[dr. t]

This looks very similar to another study that looked at TT hiring in History, Business, and Computer Science, which also skew very strongly towards a few (~20) programs.

You can read that study (and poke at their data) here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005

Edited August 26, 2015 by telkanuru