First of all, the unusually high number of applications were a result of the rising number of university graduates with M.A.s and PhD in history in the years 1950 and 1951. In the Academic Year 1949/1950, the number of M. A. degrees in history all over the U. S. had peaked to around 1,800 (200 more than in 1947/48 and 500 more than in 1952/53), while the number of PhD degrees in history peaked a year later, up to 325 (1947/48: 162, 1952/53: 301). (see Table A).

Table A:

Number of degrees awarded in all subject fields and in basic social science fields, 1946-53

History:                                               Total degrees    Bachelor    Master    Phd

1947-48 ............................................. 10,973               9,245         1,566        162 

1948-49 ............................................. 12,312               10,491       1,609        212 

1949-50 ............................................. 15,643               13,567        1,801       275 

1950-51 ............................................. 14,339               12,321        1,693       325 

1951-52 ............................................. 11,978               10,216        1,445       317 

1952-53 ............................................. 11,171                9, 576        1,294       301 

Total .................................................. 76,416                65,416       9, 408     1,592

Source: Employment Outlook in the Social Sciences. U. S. Department of Labor (in Cooperation with the Veterans Administration). Bulletin No. 1167 Published 1954., Table A, p. 62.

Around 1950, the History Department of CUA had a high quality that also attracted non-Catholic historians like Georg Iggers. For him, however, the main reason to apply there was DC, where he could work in the Library of Congress and the National Archives. 

However, the G. I. Bill only caused a temporary increase of the student population, a much higher increase would happen a couple of years later, when the baby-boomer generation entered colleges. The proportion of the population between 25 and 34 with a B. A. and higher almost doubled from 6% (1940) to 11% in 1960, while those with “some College or Associate Degree” increased from 7% (1940) to 11% in 1960, meaning that the overall percentage of the age group with some form of college education rose from 13% to 22% between 1940 and 1960. In 1950, it was only 16%.⁶ 1950 thus represented a peak after the decrease of numbers of students during the War, and the numbers were higher than in 1940, but the real explosion of higher education began more than a decade later, after a temporary decline during the 1950s.⁷ 

In a survey carried out in 1952, a questionnaire was sent out to the 4,662 members of the American Historical Association of which 2,979 replies (2,236 men and 326 women).⁸ Of those who responded, 1,705 held a PhD. 27 of them (1.6%) had their PhD from the Catholic University of America which meant that at the time, the CUA Department of History was the 16th largest PhD program in the United States. 

PhD education in history was still very concentrated at the time. The four major institutions, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago and the University of California (all campuses) alone awarded 678 PhDs (39.8%), the next six larger programs (Yale, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa State) handed out 405 PhDs (23.7%). This means that the ten largest PhD programs in the USA were awarding almost two thirds of all doctorates. With 27 PhDs, CUA was the 16th largest program in the country, following Cornell (43), Stanford (39), Johns Hopkins (33), Minnesota (30) and Princeton (30). In 1952, CUA awarded more PhDs than Duke (23), Texas (22), Ohio State (22), Vanderbilt (14), Northwestern (12), North Carolina (12), Clark (12), Indiana (12), St Louis (11), Georgetown (10) and Boston (10). Only 59 universities nationwide even had PhD programs in 1952. At that time, CUA, like Georgetown awarded many PhDs compared to their relatively smaller number of B. A. degrees, in comparison to other institutions. 

The strength of the PhD program in the early 1950s might explain why so many historians who had just graduated after the War, many veterans among them, were seeking a position at CUA. Another reason was most probably the location of the university in the nation’s capital. Finally, the Catholic character of the institution and the boom of Catholic higher education (including high schools) can help to explain why so many historians were applying for a position at the History Department of CUA. Between 1919 and 1939, the number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools had increased from 8,100 to 10,049.⁹ 

The look at the immediate years after World War II demonstrates the strength and national excellence of the History Department of CUA.  

⁶Numbers taken from: Educational Attainment over Time, 1940–2009. https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-tables/educational-attainment-over-time-1940-2009.

⁷120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. (1993). https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf

⁸Wellemeyer Jr, J. F. Survey of United States Historians, 1952, and a Forecast. The American Historical Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Jan., 1956), pp. 339-352. Here, table IV, p. 346.

⁹120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. (1993). https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf, table 15, p. 49.