A Survey of Graduate Study in Art Education

Abstract

The first and the last survey of graduate programs in art education was conducted more than 30 years ago by Eisner (1963) and published in the 65th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education which was devoted, at that time, to art education. Fields, from time to time, need to assess their status, to take stock as it were, to secure data that will provide a description of current features. It is time, therefore, to take another look. The study reported here is a follow up to Eisner's study. It is designed not simply to duplicate that study, but to provide information that was not secured in 1963. The data collected make it possible to identify the emergence of new areas of specialization, to examine the status of art education programs in various universities, and to identify the expectations for graduate education in the most active graduate programs in both the United States and Canada. Logistics It is to be noted that unlike the 1963 survey, Canadian universities are included here since Canada is part of the NAEA family, and perhaps more importantly because the borders between Canada and the United States are extremely fluid. Canadian art educators have an active role in various professional meetings in the United States, they contribute to the journals published in the United States, and they often teach in U.S. universities; and the traffic between the countries goes both ways. The procedures we employed are as follows. We sent out two rounds of questions,2 the first round to all the graduate programs we could locate in the United States and Canada, and the second round to 25 programs selected through criteria outlined below as being particularly significant in the field. In both rounds, potential survey participants who did not respond by the stated deadline received a second request. Questionnaires were sent and returned and the data are current as of fall term, 1996. We mailed the first questionnaire (Appendix 1) to 248 college and university programs listed in The American Art Directory (1996), The College Blue Book (1995), The Guide to American Art Schools (Werenko, 1987), and/or Peterson's Guide to Graduate Programs in Business, Education, Health and Law (1995) as having graduate programs in art education. We received 177 responses (71%). Of the 177 programs responding, 124 reported having graduate programs in art education. Nine of the 53 programs reporting no graduate programs art education have recently dropped them due to low enrollments. Most of the other 44 have some art education coursework embedded in other sorts of programs but no art education graduate program per se. Round One Demographics Of the 124 programs reporting graduate programs in round one and constituting the sample, 32 offer the doctorate, with 15 offering only the Ph.D., 6 only the Ed.D. and 11 both. Twelve institutions offer the Ed.S. or six-year degree; 117 some variation of the master's degree (M.A., M.S., M.A.T., M.F.A., M.Ed., and so on, with two programs offering the master's in integrated arts); and 3 programs (all in California) offer a fifth-year certification degree. A handful of the most comprehensive programs offer most or all of these degrees. The general paradigm for doctoral degree-granting institutions is to offer a configuration such as the Ed.D. or the Ph.D. and the M.S. or MA. However, the vast majority of North American graduate programs in art education grant only the master's degree, usually with a certification option. Total art education graduate enrollment at the sample schools was 2,454 as of fall term 1996, with 2,093 being master's level students and 361 being doctoral students. At both the master's and doctoral levels the ratio is about 71% female and 29% male, with 1,655 female master's students to 438 males and 255 female doctoral students to 106 males. In the 1995-96 school year the programs making up the sample reported 49 doctoral and 471 master's level graduates. …