Abstract: Academic human resource programs have now enjoyed a relatively stable period of growth and expansion in the U.S. As Watkins and Marsick (2016) noted in their examination of academic program offerings in HRD, this expansion has been in response to industry and professional needs for more formal expertise and a steady labor demand. As academic program directors strive to both maintain responsive HRD programs as well as build and grow new programs, it is important to understand the landscape of degree offerings and degree production. This abstract represents a work in progress to better understand degree production data from HRD programs across the U.S. Using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), I present several findings that can be useful as we, as a field, continue to work towards improving HRD education. As a more specific first step, I place a special emphasis on the historic trends of graduating women and BIPOC students from HRD degree programs. There has been interest in the development of HRD degree programs virtually since the inception of the field (see, e.g. Geber, 1987; Kaeter, 1995). As the field continued to develop and mature, growing interest around what degrees are being offered, what institutions are offering them, and what those degrees teach students to do has expanded. For example, Kuchinke’s work examining HRD curriculum (Kuchinke, 2003, 2007) and degree production (Kuchinke, 2002) is highly informative to this discussion. In fact, Kuchinke described this line of inquiry as “an important but largely overlooked area of scholarship in the field” (Kuchinke, 2002, p. 128). Some have taken a specific interest in issues pertaining to HRD graduate degrees (Akdere & Conceição, 2013; Lim & Cho, 2015; Zachmeier et al., 2014), while others have examined undergraduate degrees (Beyerlein et al., 2017; Greer & Waight, 2017). A critical aspect missing from many discussions of HRD degree programs and graduates is the diversity of the degree holders. Here, I take a slightly different approach than much of the previous work in this area. As a starting point, I emphasize historical HRD degree completion of women and BIPOC graduates. Data for this analysis were retrieved from IPEDS, the data repository maintained by the U.S. Department of Education containing institutional data like completion rates, institutional characteristics, and student characteristics. I also utilized the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code for HRD programs (52.1005) to narrow the sample to only institutions reporting that code. Since 2003, the total number of HRD degrees granted to women has increased. Figures 1 and 2 depict bachelor’s and master’s degrees, respectively, awarded to both men and women. Women consistently obtain between 70% and 80% of bachelor’s degrees awarded annually and between 60% and 80% of master’s degrees awarded. Doctoral degree attainment is less for women, averaging 54% of all HRD doctoral degrees awarded annually since 2003. It should be noted that IPEDS does not currently allow for reporting of transgender or non-gender conforming identities.
Figure 1 HRD Bachelor’s Degrees Conferred by Gender
Figure 2 HRD Master’s Degrees Conferred by Gender
Similarly, the number of HRD degrees awarded to BIPOC individuals has increased since 2003. On average, 31% of HRD associate’s degrees, 32% of HRD bachelor’s degrees, 53% of HRD master’s degrees, and 34% of HRD doctoral degrees are awarded to BIPOC students. This is seemingly positive news, but room for improvement exists in recruiting and graduating BIPOC doctoral candidates. This research project is ongoing. One of the most important next steps is to include institutions that do not report degree completions under the “human resources development” CIP code. An examination of AHRD membership indicates that many universities that are represented in AHRD are not represented in the population of institutions using the HRD CIP code. Additionally, further analysis is planned to understand institutional characteristics (like public vs private control, urban setting, or Carnegie status) that might be predictive of larger and more diverse HRD programs. More granular data is available about specific racial identities and will be included in future analyses. Keywords: HRD program planning, degree attainment
