http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-09-15-womenphd14_st_N.

htm 9/14/10 12:35 PM

Further, the rate of increase in doctoral awards for

For first time, more women outpaces that for men in all disciplines.
Overall, women became the majority of new

women than men doctorate recipients in a year in which their

earn PhD
Updated 20m ago
By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
With female enrollments growing at all levels of
higher education, doctoral degrees have been one
area where men have continued to dominate. No
more. New data being released today show that in
2008-09, for the first time, women earned a majority
of the doctoral degrees awarded in the USA.
The data are part of an analysis of graduate
enrollments and degrees from the Council of
Graduate Schools. The majority for women in
doctoral degrees is slight, 50.4%. But the shift has
been steady and significant. As recently as 2000,
women were earning only 44% of doctoral degrees.
In master's degrees, where women have already
accounted for a majority of degrees, their share now
stands at 60%.
Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis
for the Council of Graduate Schools, said that the
female majority for doctoral recipients was "a natural
progression of what we have been seeing" in the
rest of higher education. Given that female
enrollments have overtaken male enrollments in
associate, bachelor's and master's programs, he
said, "the pipeline is increasingly female."
numbers increased by 6.1% while male numbers
increased by 1%.
For now, the odds of a new doctorate holder being
male or female depend on the field studied.
The female percentages are likely to go up, if trends
of the last 10 years continue. During that time, the
average annual rate of increase in doctorates earned
by women was 5.5%, more than twice the male
percentage of 2.1%. While the size of that gap varies
by discipline, it is present even in disciplines where
the vast majority of doctorates today go to men.
The Council of Graduate Schools report features a
range of other data on those entering and finishing
graduate school and what they are studying. One
figure may suggest some boost for the male share of
enrollments. In 2009, the council found that first-
time enrollment in all graduate programs grew by
6.7% for men compared to 4.7% for women. But Bell,
noting that this figure includes master's programs
in addition to doctoral programs, said that this brief
increase is likely "a blip" on a larger trend in which
women will earn more and more doctorates relative
to men.
INSIDE HIGHER ED: Ups and downs in graduate
admissions
So is the trend of more doctorates going to women
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In fact, he said that the only reason that women did

not become a majority of doctoral recipients earlier
is that a greater share of doctoral degrees are
awarded in fields like engineering that remain
disproportionately male than is the case at the
undergraduate level.

The majority for women in doctoral degrees is not

seen in all disciplines. Only 22% of engineering
doctorates in 2008-09 were awarded to women, and
only 27% in mathematics and computer science. But
the fields in which women now make up a majority
go well beyond arts and humanities, and include
health sciences and the biological sciences.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-09-15-womenphd14_st_N.htm 9/14/10 12:35 PM

than to men something to celebrate (for the
academic success of women), to worry about (for the
shortage of men), or both?
Richard Whitmire, the author of Why Boys Fail:
Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That's
Leaving Them Behind and the blog Why Boys Fail,
said that he is not surprised by the results, given
the trends he has been writing about in high
schools and undergraduate colleges. He said that
the development with doctorates points to the need
for colleges to take seriously not only the issue of
falling male enrollments, but also that of the
correlations between gender and course of study.
WHITMIRE Q&A: College gender gap has far-
reaching consequences
increases. In 2009, the percentage reached 29.1%,
up from 28.3% the year before.
•With U.S. enrollments increasing, the percentage of
international students among first-time graduate
enrollments fell in 2009 to 16.5%, from 18% the
prior year.
•Applications to U.S. graduate schools (for master's
and doctoral programs) increased 8.3% from 2008
to 2009.
•The most popular fields in total number of
applicants are business, engineering and the social
and behavioral sciences, but the largest percentage
increase came in health sciences, up 14.6%.

"We should care that men and women major in

different things," he said, not because there is
anything wrong with women pursuing social
science or men engineering but because "we are not
fielding our best team" if some groups aren't part of
the equation.

Bell, of the Council of Graduate Schools, had a

similar view. "If the U.S. is to remain competitive and
economically strong, it is important that we recruit
and retain the best and brightest students in
graduate education, and that means from all
segments of the population," he said.

That's why it matters that many minority groups are

not represented in the doctoral education cohort as
they are in the general population, and the same is
true for men, especially if the gender gap grows as
expected. Advertisement

"We cannot depend on one segment of our

population to provide for the majority of our
workforce needs in individual fields," he said.

Here are some of the other highlights of the new

report on graduate enrollments:

•The increasing share of women in graduate

education is not present among international
students, where they make up only 42% of students.
The share of women is much larger among U.S.
citizens, and reaches 71% for African-American
graduate students.

•The representation of minority groups in American

graduate schools continued a pattern of modest

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