Useful Stats: S&E Grad Students

The National Science Foundation has released Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: Fall 2000, a collection of 54 detailed statistical tables present the distribution of graduate students in science and engineering (S&E) across population segments, fields of science or engineering and by college and state.

Nationally, there were 414,570 graduate S&E students in 2000, up less than one percent from the previous year. The tables report California, New York, Texas and Illinois had the most graduate S&E students in science and engineering in 2000.

To standardize the data for comparison across states, SSTI has prepared the accompanying table <http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/060702t.htm> presenting the amount of academic R&D spending in each state per graduate S&E student. The results show Alaska, at $179,928, has the most R&D expenditures per student, followed closely by Maryland at $167,599, before dropping sharply to Hawaii at $114,235. The national average academic spending per graduate S&E student in 2000 was $72,506.60. New Hampshire, Washington, Georgia, North Carolina, Vermont, Missouri, and Maine round off the top 10.

While presenting the data in a different light than typical standardizations, the student figures exclude 80,000 students in health fields; the academic R&D does not omit health related R&D. Unfortunately, none of the tables in Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: Fall 2000 present figures for graduate students in the health field by state or institution.