Philosopher Kathleen Wallace, who is Chair of the Department at Hofstra University, and who has called attention before to the unfortunate tendency of those studying outcomes by college major to lump philosophy with religion, writes:
Briefly, the issue for philosophers concerns how philosophy majors are often aggregated with religious studies majors by data collectors and researchers. This may have deleterious consequences for philosophy when student outcomes are reported in the media.
There is a time-sensitive action item during the public comment period for proposed revisions to the census bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). ACS is proposing to eliminate Question 12 which asks about the respondent's college major. Comment period closes: December 30, 2014.
I'm attaching a brief summary of the issue with the time sensitive action item, which I was wondering if you would be willing to post on Leiter Reports. (The summary is in the attached: Download Aggregating_Data_Summary_v3PDF.) I've written up a more detailed explanation of the data issues which I put up on my website,
http://www.kathwallace.com/institution.html (it's the first item on the that page).
I encourage philosphers to take time to submit comments to the ACS, since I think Prof. Wallace is quite right about the unfortunate impact this has on the results for philosophy.
UPDATE: Professor Wallace reports that she heard back from the ACS "as to whether they use aggregated or distinct coding for philosophy and religion on ACS question 12," and it turns out to be the former. Here's their answer:
It looks like the main questions are whether or not we break down "Philosophy and Religious Studies" (4801) into further subcategories and if so, what forms we make those data available. For ACS, we do not break down that category into further subcategories during any of our processing steps, therefore we would not have those data available. Any respondent who wrote "Philosophy", "Religious Studies", "Theology" etc. would all be coded to one category (4801).
Professor Wallace adds: "I had said in the summary that I wasn't sure whether ACS used broad or more finely grained codes from NCES CIP. I will update the more detailed report on my website…. So, it is *really* important that philosophers get in their comments — that philosophy and religious studies (and theology!) should be processed and reported as distinct majors — on the ACS question 12 during the public comment period."
ANOTHER IMPORTANT UPDATE: Here's where you go to comment on ACS Question 12: Direct all written comments to Jennifer Jessup, Departmental Paperwork Clearance Officer, Department of Commerce, Room 6616, 14th and Constitution Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20230 (or via the Internet at jjessup@doc.gov). More information here:
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