Women were awarded more doctorates than men for the first time last year, according to a study released Monday by the Council of Graduate Schools.
The achievement — women received 50.4 percent of the doctorates in the U.S. in 2008-09 — means women dominate every level of higher education from bachelor’s degrees to Ph.D.s. Women have earned more bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men since the 1980s, said Nathan Bell, the report’s author and the council’s director of research and policy analysis.
Overtaking men in the doctorate realm “was bound to happen,” Bell said. “I wasn’t sure it was going to happen this year, but it wasn’t a surprise.”
But the study, which analyzed graduate degrees awarded by nearly 700 U.S. universities, also found some persistent disparities, particularly in math, science and engineering fields. Women received just 22 percent of the engineering degrees in 2008-09, and 27 percent in math and computer science.
Those statistics sharply contrasted with education and health sciences, where women earned 67 percent and 70 percent of the doctorates, respectively. Schools should work hard to balance all those numbers, Bell said.
“If we are going to remain competitive as a country, we have to draw from the best of the best in every field,” he said. “Any field that relies on one segment of the population isn’t taking full advantage of all available resources.”
Read the full story at the Arizona Wildcat.
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