History Professors as Children of the Elite

by Cliopatria

This is a topic I will be blogging about in the next little while. I came across some data for the educational level of the fathers and mothers of history faculty in the 1980s and 1990s. You might be interested to hear whether history has been more or less elitist than other disciplines when it comes to the class background of its faculty. I will also be exploring the extent to which the class background of history faculty has changed over the last few decades. If there are other questions you would like raised or pursued, please feel free to let me know.

As a teaser, consider the following:

According to the 1998-99 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, 16.7 percent of history faculty were the children of fathers who had earned a doctorate or professional degree. The only discipline with a higher percentage than history was the health sciences, where 19.8 percent of the faculty had fathers who had received a doctorate or professional degree (presumably an MD). The average for all disciplines was that only 11 percent of faculty were the children of fathers with a doctorate or professional degree.

These numbers leave me wondering whether history faculty, on average, have been more elitist than their colleagues in other disciplines. I will provide more details in subsequent posts. I look forward to your comments in the meantime.

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vaughn davis bornet - 10/8/2007

My autobiography An Independent Scholar in 20th Century America reveals the ups and downs of economic life in the Bornet household. Neither of my parents had anything like a college education, but then they had the magnificent educations of 12 year high schools in Phila. at turn of the Century (1900). They were literate, musical, artistic, etc. And I, of course, am from an OLD generation, who feels very little in common with those now inhabiting the old Missis. Valley Hist'l Ass'n where I attended all the time back then.... You know, when we still studied the successful, the leaders, the molders and shapers, as "history."

Vaughn Davis Bornet

Sterling Fluharty - 9/26/2007

For some reason, the link I provided didn't work. Here is the correct URL for Townsend's article:

http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2005/0509/0509new1.cfm

Sterling Fluharty - 9/26/2007

Jonathan,

Thanks for pointing that out. I should have clarified. My use of elitist is informed by Robert B. Townsend's analysis of the undergraduate origins of history PhDs. So I see historians as emerging from an educational elite and the institutions they work for erecting "barriers of class and privilege," as Townsend put its.

The data I have talks about the educational level of fathers and mothers. It sounds like you will be interested in hearing the patterns I uncovered.

Jonathan Dresner - 9/26/2007

I'm curious, but I'm going to have to question your use of the term "elitist" which implies a preference for elites -- in hiring, for example -- when the data you've presented so far only suggests that they are members of an educational elite.

My father has two masters degrees in math and computer science; my mother (and is all your data on fathers?) is only one of her sisters who doesn't have a post-graduate degree, though her bachelors is in a hard science....