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Survey Reveals Graduate Student Enrollment Up in S&E, but Declines for Foreign Students
A comprehensive survey of 12,000 departments within 591 institutions of higher education in the U.S. reveals that, in 2003, graduate student enrollment in S&E programs increased by 4 percent over the previous year and 9 percent over the past decade. Foreign student enrollment, however, decreased 8 percent in 2003 after falling 6 percent the year before.
The National Science Foundation InfoBrief reports similar findings to a survey conducted last year by the Council of Graduate Students (CGS) (see the Nov. 8 issue of the Digest). According to the CGS study, which surveyed 450 institutions of higher education, international graduate student applications declined across all major fields of study with the largest drop in engineering, where applications declined 36 percent from 2003 to 2004. In terms of enrollment, engineering also saw the largest decrease 24 percent from the previous year.
Overall declines in first-time, full-time enrollment of foreign students did not occur in all S&E fields, according to the NSF InfoBrief. Declines were seen in agricultural sciences, computer sciences, earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences, and engineering. However, foreign enrollment increased in biological sciences, mathematical sciences, physical sciences, and psychology, the report states.
Other promising findings reveal that overall graduate enrollment grew in all S&E fields and in all subfields except computer sciences, which dropped 3 percent over the previous year. The proportion of women among S&E graduates grew from 36 percent in 1993 to 42 percent a decade later in 2003. The number of male graduate students increased by 4 percent over the previous year. Enrollment of minority students in graduate S&E programs also has grown over the past 10 years.
The NSF InfoBrief, Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Programs Up in 2003, But Declines for First-Time Foreign Students, is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf05317/