More Students Turning to Science and Engineering

The National Science Foundation released figures this week that show more students are enrolling in U.S. graduate science and engineering programs. And these figures are for 2007, well before the recession and subsequent economic turmoil, which may have drawn even more graduate students away from the usual business-school track.

From 2006 to 2007, the latest years for which data is available, science and engineering graduate schools reported a 3.3 percent increase in enrollment.

"Science programs added the most students in absolute numbers, but engineering's percentage growth over 2006, 5.9 percent, was substantially higher than that of science, which grew by 2.4 percent," according to the NSF. "Enrollment in computer sciences programs was up 2.7 percent, the first increase since 2002." Foreign student enrollments were up more than 8 percent from 2006.

Data from the 2007 survey are available in newly restructured public use files at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvygradpostdoc/pub_data.cfm.