The Doctor of Arts (D.A.; occasionally D.Arts or Art.D. from the Latin artium doctor) is a discipline-based terminal doctoral degree that was originally conceived and designed to be an alternative to the traditional research-based Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) and the education-based Doctor of Education (Ed.D.). Like other doctorates, the D.A. is an academic degree of the highest level. The D.A. is also frequently conferred as an honorary degree with the added designation of honoris causa.

While the Ph.D. is the most common doctoral degree in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation recognize numerous research-oriented doctoral degrees such as the D.A. as "equivalent", and do not discriminate between them.

History

The idea for a Doctor of Arts degree was originally proposed at the 1932 meeting of the Association of American Universities by Wallace Atwood, then president of Clark University. In 1967 Carnegie Mellon University (formerly Carnegie Institute of Technology), began to offer the D.A. in Mathematics, History, English and Fine Arts. The first Doctor of Arts degree in the United States was awarded in 1968, by Carnegie Mellon University, to Donald H. Taranto in the field of mathematics. Guiding principles for the Doctor of Arts degree were established in 1970 by the Committee on Graduate Studies of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and by the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States. The Carnegie Foundation was the first to fund ten universities with seed money to initiate the degree, and D.A. programs (though far fewer in number than those of the Ph.D.) are currently offered in many different disciplines at universities in the United States and in other parts of the world.