The Gender Gap in Graduate Enrollments

The Council of Graduate Schools has released a new report entitled Graduate Enrollment and Degrees, 2001-2011. The report finds that in the 2010-11 academic year there were 254,341 women who were first-time enrollees in U.S. graduate schools. Women were 57.6 percent of all first-time graduate students. Women were 58.9 percent of all first-time enrollments in master’s degree programs and 50.7 percent of all first-time enrollments in doctoral programs.

Women made up large percentage of all first-time enrollments in fields such as education and health sciences. But women were only 30.5 percent of the graduate enrollments in mathematics and computer science and 24.0 percent of all first-time enrollments in engineering graduate programs.

In the 2010-11 academic year there was slightly more than 1 million women enrolled in graduate programs at U.S. universities. Women made up 60.9 percent of the total enrollments in master’s degree programs and 51.2 percent of total enrollments in doctoral degree programs.

The report documents that women earned 305,142 master’s degrees during the 2010-11 academic year. They made up 59.6 percent of all master’s degree earners. That year, 32,970 women earned doctoral degrees. They made up 52.5 percent of all doctoral degree earners.