NSF Public Affairs: mnegron@nsf.gov

In the last few weeks, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the U.S. National Science Foundation had issued several reports, to include the Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. This annual report calls attention to major trends in doctoral education.

Given your frequent integration of such statistics in your reporting, I want to be sure you are aware of this new report and offer you the opportunity to talk with the statisticians who put this report together to talk about their findings.

A few takeaways from the 2019 data:

• In 2019, the number of doctorate recipients increased to 55,703. This represents a 1% increase from 2018, below the 3.2% average annual growth since the survey’s inception.
• The number of underrepresented minority doctorate recipients (Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and American Indian or Alaska Native) grew to 5,480 in 2019. This represents a 6.7% increase from 2018.
• Women continue to be more than half of doctorate recipients in life sciences, psychology and social sciences, education, humanities and arts, and other non-science and engineering (non-S&E) fields. However, they constitute about a third of those in physical sciences and earth sciences and a quarter of those in engineering and in mathematics and computer sciences. You can find this report here: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21308/

If you’d like me to set up a ZOOM interview with the NSF staff behind this report, please email me at mnegron@nsf.gov.