Graduate school applications and first-time enrollment are on the rise with the largest increases in mathematics and computer sciences.
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) released its annual report on graduate enrollment and degrees. CGS/GRE Graduate Enrollment & Degrees: 2008–18 shows overall graduate school applications from fall 2017 to fall 2018 increased by 2.2 percent and first-time graduate school enrollment increased by 2.1 percent across all institution types.
The report examines master’s and doctoral programs across all fields of study and includes responses from 589 of the 775 institutions contacted (76 percent).
Between fall 2017 and fall 2018 total graduate school enrollment increased by 1.5 percent. A larger number of students were enrolled in private, not-for-profit institutions versus public institutions.
The fastest-growing fields in graduate education stood out. Between fall 2008 and fall 2018, first-time enrollment in mathematics and computer sciences increased 11 percent. The health sciences increased by 6 percent. These fields also showed substantial gains between fall 2017 and fall 2018 with first-time enrollment in mathematics and computer sciences increasing by 4.3 percent and health sciences by 3.3 percent. Business and education were also among the broad fields with the largest percentage of enrollment.
Conversely, applications and first-time graduate enrollment in engineering declined between fall 2017 and fall 2018. The one-year decrease in first-time graduate enrollment in engineering was 4.6 percent. A contributor to this decline is being attributed to the decrease in international students who onced comprised 51.2 percent of first-time graduate students in engineering. Researchers noted an overall 1.3 percent decrease in graduate enrollment by international students between fall 2017 and fall 2018.
In the fall of 2018, 59.7 percent of first-time graduate students at both the master’s degree and certificate level were women. At the doctoral level the percentage was 54.4 percent. Women earned 64.8 percent of graduate certificates, 58.3 percent of master’s degrees and 53 percent of doctoral degrees.
