The Doctor of Arts: A Decade of Development, 1967-77.
Although the Doctor of Arts (D. A.) degree had been discussed as early as the 1940s as possible teaching-related alternative to the research-oriented Ph.D., the first D.A. program (including mathematics, history, English, and the fine arts) was initiated at Carnegie-Mellon University in the fall of 1967. Carnegie-Mellon conferred the first D.A. degree (mathematics) in 1968 and three (history) in 1969. The best data on the spread of the D.A. have been provided by Robert Koenker, dean of the graduate school at Ball State University. Koenker's first survey (March 1970) reported that three universities were offering the degree and that twenty-five to thirty others were planning to introduce the degree within a year or two. By January 1971, Koenker found seven universities offering the D.A. in biology, economics, English, fine arts, history, mathematics, foreign languages, music, physical education, and political science. By November 1971 he reported sixteen universities offering at least one D.A. program. The fields of study had expanded to include chemistry and additional foreign languages. The accuracy of these data obviously depends upon the response of institutions and the care exercised in providing them. Dressel [5] found that, as of spring 1973, the D.A. degree-granting institutions were twenty-one in number, offering the degree in a total of forty-four departments and eighteen fields. The fields included art (1 program), biology (4), business and economics (1), chemistry (4), creative writing (1 since discontinued), English (10), French (1), German (1),