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Higher Education
Quartiles | Findings | Description
Advanced S&E degrees as share of S&E degrees conferred: 2003
Advanced S&E degrees as share of S&E degrees conferred: 2003
Quartiles
Advanced S&E degrees as share of S&E degrees conferred: 2003*
| 1st Quartile (42.3%–25.4%) |
2nd Quartile (25.2%–21.5%) |
3rd Quartile (21.1%–17.3%) |
4th Quartile (17.2%–7.9%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | California | Arizona | Arkansas |
| Alaska | Delaware | Idaho | Iowa |
| Colorado | Florida | Indiana | Maine |
| Connecticut | Georgia | Kentucky | Montana |
| District of Columbia | Hawaii | Louisiana | New Hampshire |
| Illinois | Kansas | Minnesota | North Dakota |
| Maryland | Mississippi | North Carolina | Rhode Island |
| Massachusetts | Nebraska | Oregon | South Carolina |
| Michigan | Nevada | Pennsylvania | Tennessee |
| Missouri | New Jersey | South Dakota | Utah |
| New Mexico | New York | Virginia | Vermont |
| Oklahoma | Ohio | Washington | Wisconsin |
| Texas | Wyoming | West Virginia | |
| *States in alphabetical order, not data order.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. See |
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Findings
- In 2003, nearly, 132,000 advanced S&E degrees were awarded nationwide; this total represented approximately 19% more than in 1993, but the share of advanced degrees remained stable at 23% of all S&E degrees conferred.
- Some states specialize in providing graduate-level technical training, with just over 30% of their S&E graduates completing training at the master’s or doctoral level; other states have much smaller graduate S&E programs, with values as low as 8%.
- The District of Columbia is an outlier, with 42% reflecting large S&E graduate programs in political science and public administration at several of its academic institutions.
- States that emphasize advanced S&E education are not necessarily the same states as those that emphasize undergraduate-level S&E education; only about half of the states in the top two quartiles for intensity of advanced S&E degree production would appear in the top two quartiles for a similar indicator showing intensity of S&E bachelor’s degree production.
Description
This indicator shows the extent to which a state’s higher education programs in science and engineering are concentrated at the graduate level. S&E fields include physical, life, earth, ocean, atmospheric, computer, and social sciences; mathematics; engineering; and psychology. Advanced S&E degrees include master’s and doctoral degrees. All degrees include bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Associate’s degrees are excluded from this indicator.
The indicator value is obtained by dividing the number of advanced S&E degrees by the total number of S&E degrees awarded by the higher education institutions within the state. A high value shows that a state is significantly investing its S&E training budget at the graduate level.
