by Ruth Heuer, Peter Einaudi, and Kelly H. Kang[1]

The number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolled in science and engineering (S&E) graduate programs declined to 385,343 students in 2012. The 1.7% drop from 2011 was countered by a 4.3% increase in enrollment of foreign S&E graduate students on temporary visas, which rose to 176,075. Overall growth of S&E graduate student enrollment stalled for the second year in a row in 2012, after experiencing 2%–3% annual increases from 2005 to 2010. S&E graduate enrollment grew by less than 1% in 2011 and 2012.

These and other findings are from the fall 2012 Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS), cosponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Graduate Enrollment in S&E

S&E Graduate Student Profile

Between 2011 and 2012, S&E graduate enrollment declined among part-time students, women, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents across most ethnic and racial groups. A profile of S&E graduate enrollment by these characteristics is shown in table 1.

Enrollment of part-time S&E graduate students declined by 1.8% to 147,034 students, and full-time enrollment grew by 0.8% to 414,384 students in 2012. Full-time students made up 73.8% of the S&E graduate student population.

Enrollment of female graduate students decreased in 2012 by 0.1% to 242,548. Although small, this was the first decline in S&E graduate enrollment of women observed in the GSS, which began collecting data on graduate enrollment by sex in 1977. Women made up 43.2% of the S&E graduate enrollment in 2012.

Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents, graduate enrollment in S&E declined across all ethnic and racial groups except Hispanics or Latinos and those reporting more than one race. In 2012 S&E graduate enrollment decreased by 2.7% to 31,338 for blacks or African Americans and by 2.1% to 250,783 for whites, the first decline in enrollment for these groups in 10 years. Over the past decade, the distribution of enrollment by race has become more diverse, with whites making up 65.1% of the U.S. citizens and permanent resident graduate students in 2012, compared with 68.1% in 2003.

Enrollment of foreign students rose in 2012 by 4.3%. S&E graduate students holding temporary visas made up 31.4% of the 2012 S&E graduate enrollment, up from 30.1% in 2011 (figure 1).

  Figure 1 Source Data: Excel file

S&E Graduate Enrollment by Field

After a decade of steady growth, the number of graduate students enrolled in science fields decreased overall by 0.3% between 2011 and 2012 (table 2). Graduate enrollment in social sciences saw a substantial increase in 2011, which may have been influenced by the adoption of an updated classification of degree-granting program fields in the 2011 GSS.[2] The subsequent decline in this field in 2012 (-3.1 %) returned enrollment numbers to levels seen in previous years. Some of the year-to-year change may be due to changes in institutional reporting as well as to actual declines in enrollment.

Graduate enrollment in engineering fields rebounded in 2012, following a decline in 2011. The 1.3% increase (from 146,501 to 148,385 between 2011 and 2012) in graduate students enrolled in engineering can be traced to certain engineering fields—chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and metallurgical or materials engineering—showing growth over 4.5% between 2011 and 2012. Graduate enrollment in biomedical engineering stabilized in 2012, following several years of steady growth from 5,301 graduate students in 2003 to 9,157 in 2012.

Totals in selected health fields are presented for comparison in table 2. Further analysis of GSS graduate enrollment data for selected health fields, both for S&E graduate enrollment and for postdoctoral appointees (postdocs), are available from NIH (see "Data Sources and Limitations").

Postdoctoral Appointees in S&E

S&E Postdoc Profile

The GSS also collects information about postdocs employed at U.S. academic institutions (and their affiliates, such as research centers and hospitals) with graduate programs in S&E and selected health fields. A total of 43,841 S&E postdocs were reported in 2012, a 0.6% decrease from 2011 (table 3).

The number of S&E postdocs dropped from 2011 to 2012 among men (-0.5%) and women (-0.9%). The share of female S&E postdocs has grown over the past decade from a steady 31%–33% through 2007 to about 36% in 2012.

The distribution of U.S. citizen and permanent resident S&E postdocs by ethnicity and race shows little change from when these data were first collected. The only noticeable changes were in the declining share of Asian postdocs in 2012 (16.5%), compared with the previous years (17.2% in 2011 and 17.6% in 2010).

Since 2010, the share of S&E postdocs who hold temporary visas has remained steady at 53.9%. Although foreign postdocs still have the larger share of S&E postdocs, their share has decreased from a decade ago (59.8% in 2003).

S&E Postdocs by Field

Substantial growth in engineering fields over the past decade has continued to shift the distribution of postdocs across the broad categories of science and engineering. The proportion of postdocs in science in 2012 was 83.8%, down from 88.7% in 2003, and engineering made up 16.2% of S&E postdocs in 2012, up from 11.3% in 2003.

In 2012, the number of postdocs in science fields declined by 1.6% (37,335 in 2011 and 36,738 in 2012). The decrease in 2012 is largely due to a decline in the number of postdocs in biological sciences (-4.8%) and physical sciences (-0.8%). The science fields with the largest growth in 2012 were earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences (10.3%); mathematical sciences (8.7%); and other sciences, which includes the fields of neuroscience and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies (7.3%).

A decrease in the number of science postdocs in 2012 was partially offset by an increase in the number of engineering postdocs (4.7%). In 2012, the number of postdocs in engineering climbed to a new high of 7,103, nearly doubling the number since 2003. The two largest increases in the number of engineering postdocs from 2010 to 2012 were in electrical engineering (11.3%) and mechanical engineering (10.8%).

Data Sources and Limitations

Conducted since 1966, the GSS is an annual survey of all academic institutions in the United States granting research-based master's or doctoral degrees in science, engineering, or selected health (SEH) fields. The 2012 GSS collected data from 13,952 organizational units (departments, programs, affiliated research centers, and health care facilities) at 565 institutions of higher education and their affiliates in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The institutional response rate was 99.3%. An overview of the survey is available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvygradpostdoc/.

GSS health fields are collected under the advisement of NIH. These fields comprise about one-third of all health fields in the U.S. Department of Education's Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) taxonomy.[3] NIH information on trends seen within these selected health fields can be found at http://www.report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/.

In 2011, the GSS field taxonomy was updated to conform to the 2010 CIP. The impact on overall GSS counts as a result of this change was minimal. See appendix A, "Technical Notes," in Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: Fall 2011 (NSF 13-331) for additional information about the 2011 GSS field taxonomy updates.

In 2012, missing values from the new postdoc and nonfaculty researcher data collected beginning in 2010 were imputed for the first time using more detailed imputation procedures. Therefore, the postdoc numbers in 2010 and 2011 are different from the numbers released in previous years. The data in this InfoBrief supersede data in previous reports.

This publication provides the first release of data from the fall 2012 GSS. Data tables from the 2012 GSS will be available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvygradpostdoc/. Individual data tables are available in advance by contacting the NSF author.

Notes

[1] Ruth Heuer and Peter Einaudi are with RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC. For more information, contact Kelly H. Kang, Human Resources Statistics Program, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 965, Arlington, VA 22230 (kkang@nsf.gov; 703-292-7796).

[2] For details, see appendix A, "Technical Notes," of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering: Fall 2011 at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13331/.

[3] The CIP provides a taxonomic scheme that supports the consistent reporting of fields of study and program completions activity. For more information, see http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/.