Women have already outnumbered men among undergraduates and graduates for some time; now, women are earning more doctoral degrees than men too, reports Inside Higher Ed and NPR articles.
According to Claudio Sanchez from NPR (citing from the Council of Graduate Schools’ latest report), women were awarded 50.4% of Ph.D.s in 2008-2009, compared to 44% in 2000-2001. Most Ph.D.s were awarded in the fields of health sciences, public administration, and education. Men still dominate Ph.D. (and M.A.) fields like engineering, an area in which only 22% of degrees are awarded to women. (That number, however, has gone up dramatically since 20 years ago when only 10% of Ph.D. degrees in engineering were awarded to women.)
The Inside Higher Ed article, “Women Lead in Doctorates,” provides the following information on the percentage of women Ph.D. recipients according to field:
- Health sciences – 70% female graduates
- Education 67%
- Public administration and services – 61%
- Social and behavioral sciences – 60%
- Arts and humanities – 53%
- Biological and agricultural sciences – 51%
- Business – 39%
- Physical and earth sciences – 33%
- Math and computer science – 27%
- Engineering – 22%
Other findings from the new GMAC report (as noted in the Inside Higher Ed article) include:
- In international graduate education, women make up only 42% of all students. U.S. female citizens are in highest attendance at the graduate level, with numbers reaching 71% among African Americans.
- The percentage of minority groups in U.S. graduate schools increased slightly from 28.3 in 2008 to 29.1% in 2009.
- Enrollment of first-time international students to U.S. schools dropped 1.5% from 18% in 2008 to 16.5% in 2009.
- 8.3% more applicants applied to U.S. M.A. and Ph.D. programs in 2009 than in 2008.
- The field of health sciences experienced the greatest increase in applications, at 14.6%, but the most popular fields in the total number of applicants were business, engineering, and the social/behavioral sciences.
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Read the full article: More Women Earn Ph.D.s (and Other Degrees) than Men
