The term Buddhology was coined in the early 20th century by the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter to mean the "study of Buddhahood, the nature of the Buddha, and doctrines of a Buddha", but the terms Buddhology and Buddhist studies are generally synonymous in the contemporary context.
[3] Scholars of Buddhist studies focus on the history, culture, archaeology, arts, philology, anthropology, sociology, theology, philosophy, practices, interreligious comparative studies and other subjects related to Buddhism.
The first graduate program in Buddhist studies in North America started in 1961 at the University of Wisconsin–Madision.
[8] Prebish cites two surveys by Hart[full citation needed] in which the following university programs were found to have produced the most scholars with U.S. university posts: Chicago, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Virginia, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Temple, Northwestern, Michigan, Washington, and Tokyo.
Charles Prebish, a scholar-practitioner and Chair of Religious Studies at Utah State University, states that the Buddhist studies and academics in North American universities include those who are practicing Buddhists, the latter he terms as “scholar-practitioners.”.