Independent scholars: A neglected breed

Abstract

T he status of public intellectuals and part-time faculty receives frequent attention, while that of independent scholars is usually ignored.Yet the production of more scholars than campuses employ inevitably puts a growing number outside the academic orbit. Either existing insti tutions--universities, research libraries, funding programs, scholarly societies, journals, and presses--will respond to the changing ecology of scholarship; new institutions will cater to it; or the excess scholars will waste like uncropped corn.To an extent, all three alternatives are likely.This article will discuss notable features that emerge from a review of the largely uncharted terrain of independent scholarship. In various definitions, independent scholars are those unaffiliated with an academic, or with any, institution, or whose work duties do not include research and scholarship.Typically, they are Ph.D.s in the humanities, often women, who, unable to find scholarly employment ("independent," a wit says, is a euphemism for"unemployed"), pursue scholarly interests on their own.Though the term"scholar" is little used in the social sciences, many anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists (75% of those who received a Ph.D. in 1999) practice their profession off campus. The definition is a cloud that can obscure such basic questions as the number of independent scholars, their professional needs, and what policies best serve their interests. In practice, an independent scholar is anyone who believes he or she is one and w h o m a professional association, granting agency, or library accepts as one. In 1989, James Bennett, who received $148,000 from the Spencer Foundation to study independent scholars (and, housed at Northwestern, was then no longer independent) , estimated that there were 20,00025,000 in the humanities and social sciences. His estimate included all nonacademic scholars; the number of unaffiliated scholars was far lower. Few academic societies accurately represent the full spect rum of persons with graduate degrees in their field.Typically, they over-represent university faculty and under-represent faculty at 2and 4-year colleges, masters and Ph.D.s in nonacademic jobs, and those who are unemployed or retired.