Minority Students Earned Greater Number of Academic Degrees in Fiscal Year 2006
Source: National Science Foundation

A new National Science Foundation report shows an increase in the number of academic degrees awarded to minority students since 2004, the last time such data were published.

The report, Science and Engineering Degrees by Race/Ethnicity: 1997-2006, developed by the Science Resources Statistics division of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate shows more degrees awarded to minorities in nearly all categories.

Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents who earned bachelor’s degrees from fiscal year 2004 to 2006, Asians showed the largest rate of increase–10.5 percent. American Indian/Alaska Natives showed the smallest at 1.3 percent.

Master’s degree recipients also included increased numbers of minority awardees.The number of Hispanics receiving master’s degrees grew by 13.1 percent, while the number of blacks grew by a similar amount–13 percent. White students showed the smallest growth rate at 5.9 percent.

Although American Indian/Native American and black students showed increases in terms of bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded, these groups showed sharp declines relative to doctoral degrees, falling off by 9.1 and 9.8 percent respectively. The number of Asian, Hispanic and white doctorate recipients increased by 15.8, 16.1 and 2.5 percent respectively.

+ Science and Engineering Degrees, by Race/Ethnicity: 1997–2006

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 12:59 am and is filed under Education, Ethnic, Postsecondary, Race, Science, Social and cultural issues, Technology. 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.