2018 Digest

The United States awards many associate’s degrees (over 1 million in 2015), nearly one-quarter of which are in S&E fields (9%) and S&E technologies (14%). The latter, which have a more applied focus, grew by 72% since 2000, and are concentrated in health and engineering technologies.

Since 2000, women earned about 60% of associate’s degrees in all fields. But their proportion in S&E fields was less than half (44%) in 2015, reflecting primarily a drop in women’s participation in computer science during this period (42% to 21%).

U.S. output of bachelor’s degrees has increased by more than one-half over the past 2 decades. S&E degrees have consistently accounted for over one-third of the total.

Globally, S&E bachelor’s degree awards totaled more than 7.5 million. Almost half of these degrees were conferred in India (25%) and China (22%); another 20% were conferred in the EU (10%) and the United States (10%). The number of S&E degrees has risen much faster over the past 15 years in India and China than in the United States and many European countries.

S&E fields account for a larger proportion of all bachelor’s degrees in China than in the United States. In 2014, these fields accounted for 48% of all bachelor’s degrees in China, compared with 39% of all bachelor’s degrees in the United States.

Advanced training toward the doctorate has expanded in recent years. The number of doctoral degrees in S&E has risen dramatically in China, whereas the numbers awarded in the United States, South Korea, and the eight EU countries with the most doctorate awards have risen more modestly.

In 2014, the United States graduated the largest number of S&E doctorate recipients of any individual country, followed by China. In the United States, more than one-third (37%) of these doctorates were earned by temporary visa holders.

The United States remains the destination of choice for the largest number of internationally mobile students worldwide. Yet the share of the world’s internationally mobile students enrolled in the United States fell from 25% in 2000 to 19% in 2014, due to efforts by other countries to attract more foreign students and to growing higher education capacity around the world. Other popular destinations for internationally mobile students are the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Russia, and Germany.

Public institutions in the United States, as part of their mission, have traditionally offered access to high-quality education for students, where in-state students generally pay a lower tuition than out-of-state students. Between 2000 and 2015, the cost of attending U.S. public research universities has risen, coinciding with a decline in state and local appropriations, a considerable source of institution revenue.

Among dependent undergraduate students attending public research universities, out-of-pocket tuition and fees vary across families in different income brackets and have increased for families at both the lower and higher income brackets.