The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation combined its concern that few top flight scholars are choosing the humanities for careers and its awareness of the current oversupply of humanities faculty to create a $24 million fellowship program to direct talented graduate students into English and comparative literature, American studies, history, classics,…

The five-volume Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, the most authoritative academic quality ranking ever done, is discussed. The Assessment covers 2,699 programs in 32 disciplines and assesses a faculty's reputation for scholarly quality. Improvements in programs' reputations are also discussed. (MLW)

Comparative data are gathered on (1) the institutional and nontransferrable fellow awards and (2) individual and portable awards of the Danforth Fellowship program. Results indicate that students attending elite universities will overwhelm their competitors in a national competition that is academically oriented and that open competition does not…