New data from the National Science Foundation/National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
The number of science and engineering graduate students at U.S. academic institutions rose by 3 percent between 2013 and 2014, owing largely to a 13.1 percent increase in foreign graduate enrollment.
According to a new report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, (NCSES) in 2014 a total of 587,161 students were enrolled in masters’ or doctorate programs in science and engineering (S&E), up from a comparable number of 570,300 the previous year.
There was also an influx of nearly 25,000 additional S&E graduate students on temporary visas over the same period, bringing foreign enrollment to 213,783.
The increase in foreign students overshadowed a 2.1 percent decline in domestic graduate enrollment, which fell from 381,225 in 2013 to 373,378 in 2014.
The report also shows a continuing trend of full-time graduate students shifting from federal sources of financial support to self-support. Since 2009, the amount of students receiving federal support declined from 19.0 percent to 15.7, including a 5.3 percent decline of 3,895 fewer students between 2013 and 2014.
Institutional support, meanwhile, has remained stable since 2009 — about 40.2 percent of students received institutional support, even with growing graduate enrollment.
Other findings in the report include:
- A rise in enrollment in computer sciences and electrical engineering continued, with computer sciences increasing by 22.1 percent and electrical engineering by 9.9 percent from 2013 to 2014.
- Graduate enrollment in most of the engineering fields has risen by at least 20 percent over the past five years.
- Graduate enrollment declined by 5.8 percent in psychology and 2.6 percent in the social sciences from 2013 to 2014.
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