Statistics: US Doctorates in the 20th Century

This report describes the history and growth of doctoral education in the United States from 1900 to 1999 and shows changes in the characteristics of persons who complete a doctoral education. It builds on a publication that examined trends in doctoral education in the first three-quarters of the 20th century: A Century of Doctorates: Data Analyses of Growth and Change, published in 1978 by the National Academy of Sciences and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Office of Education (NAS/NRC 1978).

A vast majority of Ph.D.s, however, graduated in the last 25 years of the century and are not represented in A Century of Doctorates. Moreover, the characteristics of recent doctorate recipients differ in many ways from those of Ph.D.s a generation earlier. The early 1970s marked the end of a long period of expansion in U.S. doctoral education that began after World War II. By 1974, the last year examined in A Century of Doctorates, major changes in doctoral education were just becoming established or would soon become evident: increased representation of women, minorities, and foreign nationals; interruption in the growth of doctoral awards in science and engineering fields; emergence of new fields, such as computer sciences; lengthening of the time it takes to complete doctoral study; expansion of the postdoctoral pool; and reduced academic employment opportunities after graduation.

Source: National Science Foundation (via DocuTicker.com)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 and is filed under Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.