Julia Kent, CGS                                                  

(202) 461-3874                                       

jkent@cgs.nche.edu

Tom Ewing, ETS

(609) 683-2803

tewing@ets.org  

Washington, DC – The seventh annual ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admission through Completion was presented to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). The award is sponsored by CGS and Educational Testing Service (ETS). Dr. Robin L. Garrell, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of The Graduate Division, accepted the award on UCLA’s behalf during the 55th Annual Meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).

The award recognizes promising, innovative proposals to enhance student success and degree completion at the master’s or doctoral level while promoting inclusiveness. The winning institution is selected on the strength of its proposal to meet the award’s goals and to serve as a model for other schools. The winner receives a two-year, $20,000 matching grant.

UCLA plans to build upon an existing web-based platform, the Graduate and Postdoctoral Educational Support (GRAPES), and create a new tool – Smart Recommendations (Smart Recs) – that will provide funding information to students based on their unique backgrounds, academic pursuits, and aspirational goals. Once the Smart Recs platform for funding information is built, UCLA plans to expand it to include other recommendations to support student success, such as information on campus seminars and workshops, professional and career development opportunities, and key deadlines.

[From left: Robin Garrell, Vice Provost, Graduate Education and Dean, Graduate Division accepts on behalf of University of California, Los Angeles, the 2015 ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admission through Completion; David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Education, ETS ]

“We are excited about developing a dynamic, customized recommendation system that will support the success of UCLA graduate students. The potential impact of Smart Recs extends well beyond our campus. We hope that other institutions will take note of our UX design methodology, with its focus on the graduate student user experience.” Dr. Garrell said. “Because the software architecture is largely open-source, we look forward to exploring ways the underlying technology and infrastructure can be shared.”

“The practices showcased by this award competition greatly benefit the graduate education community,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “On behalf of our members, I thank the University of California Los Angeles for sharing their creative expertise with graduate institutions everywhere by designing a platform that will provide graduate schools with better tools to bolster graduate student success. And of course, I thank ETS, whose support makes possible this novel way to promote best practices among the graduate community.”

David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Education at ETS, also lauded UCLA’s innovation. “Smart Recs will provide much needed support to prospective and current graduate students and postdocs as they move through admissions, deadlines, courses and seminars, professional development and especially funding,” said Payne. “With this initiative, UCLA brings it all together in one place to save students time, reduce frustration and make for easier access to necessary information to help them pursue their studies and careers. Importantly, Smart Recs will meet students where they spend a great deal of time and where they look to gain information – online and connected to useful and needed information.”

This year, the selection committee chose one institution to be named as Honorable Mention: The University of Buffalo, SUNY for the “Master’s 360 – Enhancing Opportunities for Academic Success and Professional Development.” This project’s aim is to expand the existing initiatives of the iSEED program to enhance and improve academic success for all URMs in any discipline at the master’s level. Graham Hammill, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, was recognized during the award luncheon.

Julia Kent, Council of Graduate Schools                                               

(202) 461-3874                                                            

jkent@cgs.nche.edu                 

Beth Dempsey, ProQuest

(248) 349-7810

beth.dempsey@proquest.com                           

Awards recognize outstanding research by graduates in the fields of Biological & Life Sciences and Humanities & Fine Arts

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards, the nation’s most prestigious honors for doctoral dissertations, were presented to Jeongmin Choi and Timo Schaefer at an awards ceremony during the Council’s 55th Annual Meeting. Dr. Choi completed her PhD in 2014 at University of Missouri, in Plant Science, and Dr. Schaefer received his PhD in 2015 from Indiana University, in History.

Bestowed annually since 1982, the awards recognize recent doctoral recipients who have already made unusually significant and original contributions to their fields. ProQuest, an international leader in dissertation archiving, discovery, and access, sponsors the awards and an independent committee from the Council of Graduate Schools selects the winners. Two awards are given each year, rotating among four general areas of scholarship. The winners receive a certificate, a $2,000 honorarium, and funds for travel to the awards ceremony.

“The Distinguished Dissertation Awards demonstrate the dramatic impact young scholars have on their fields,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “It’s a testament to the vitality and value of graduate education when recently minted PhDs contribute and expand upon knowledge to raise the level of understanding in their fields.”

Austin McLean, director, ProQuest Scholarly Communication and Dissertations Publishing said, “ProQuest has devoted decades to improving both discovery of and access to dissertations because of the vital roles they play in advancing knowledge. We’re delighted to honor the excellent examples Dr. Choi and Dr. Schaefer have provided of the fresh perspectives and innovative thinking that are found in graduate works.”​

The 2015 Award in the Biological and Life Sciences was presented to Dr. Choi for her dissertation, “Identification of an extracellular adenosine 5’–triphosphate receptor in Arabidopsis thaliana.” Recent research demonstrates Adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) plays an important role in plant growth, development, and stress responses. This project focuses on the enigmatic mechanism of extracellular ATP recognition in plants. Choi describes “a mutant screen that identified a key molecular component involved in extracellular ATP recognition in Arabidopsisthaliana. The gene identified by isolation of an ATP-insensitive mutant was termed DORN1 (Does not respond to Nucleotides 1).” She argues that DORN1 is “essential for perception of extracellular ATP and likely plays a variety of roles in plant stress responses.” Dr. Choi is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

[From left: Suzanne T. Ortega, CGS; Jeongmin Choi, winner, 2015 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award; Marlene Coles, ProQuest]

Dr. Schaefer received the 2015 Award in Humanities and Fine Arts for his dissertation, “The Social Origins of Justice: Mexico in the Age of Utopian Failure, 1821-1870.”  His project is a “comparative study of legal-institution building in indigenous towns, mestizo towns, and estate (hacienda) settlements in post-independence Mexico.” Schaefer argues that “struggles over the shape of Mexico’s post-colonial justice system turned on different conceptions of the appropriate place of labor in social life.” He concludes that “the historical failure of liberalism in nineteenth-century Mexico was linked to the defeat of a civic imagination that had conceived of labor not as the subordinate or alienated pole in an antagonistic property relation but as the constitutive and ordering power of all social life.” Dr. Schaefer is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia.

[From left: Suzanne T. Ortega, CGS; Timo Schaefer, winner, 2015 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award; Marlene Coles, ProQuest]

More information about the CGS / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award is available at www.proquest.com/go/scholars or at www.cgsnet.org.

The Council of Graduate Schools, published a report earlier this month showing that international students are coming to American universities in increasing numbers. Foreign student enrollment increased by 11.2 percent from 2013 to 2014 — accounting for two-thirds of the 0.4 percent in total 2014 growth of graduate students who enrolled for the first time. “International students are coming to U.S. institutions in growing numbers, and they are particularly attracted to [science, technology, engineering and math] fields,” said Jeff Allum, CGS assistant vice president for research and policy analysis and one of the report’s co-authors.
 

Minority representation in U.S. graduate schools continued to grow, rising from 28.3 percent of first-time domestic enrollment in 2008 to 29.1 percent in 2009. International students’ share of first-time graduate enrollments dropped from 18 percent in 2008 to 16.5 percent in 2009. Hispanics continued to lag behind. Only 4 percent of them were in graduate school. This issue of HO provides useful suggestions on what can be done to encourage more Hispanics to pursue graduate education.

The Council of Graduate Schools recently released a new report on enrollments and degree attainments in master’s and doctoral degree programs at U.S. universities. Among the first-time graduate students in 2014, Blacks were 8.8 percent of all students. Among the Black first-time graduate students, women were 69.1 percent of the new students. For students of all races, women were 56.9 percent of all new first-time graduate students. So the gender gap in new graduate students is far greater among African Americans than is the case generally.

International students continue to fuel enrolment growth at US graduate schools with international students accounted for more than two-thirds of the growth in first-time enrolment headcounts at US graduate institutions from 2004 to 2014 according to CGS’s Graduate and Enrollment Degree report. An analysis of applications by foreign students to specific academic programs found that nearly two-thirds were for admission to masters and certificate programs, challenging a long-held assumption that most are pursuing doctoral degrees.

International students drove enrollment up at graduate schools across the country last fall, delivering the largest one-year increase in first-time graduate enrollment since 2009. The 3.5 percent increase in new graduate students was bolstered by high enrollment in mathematics, computer science, and engineering, all of which experienced double-digit growth with an influx of students from overseas. “The increase in overall enrollments is good news, but the disparity between U.S. and international growth is a cause for concern,” said CGS President, Suzanne Ortega.

First-time graduate school enrollment was up 3.5 percent in 2014 from the year before, the biggest annual increase since 2009. The increase is a combination of “very robust” growth among international students -- up 11.2 percent year over year -- as well as a significant, 1.3 percent jump in enrollment among U.S. citizens said to CGS’s Jeff Allum. According to the survey, last year set records in terms of applications, offers of admission, and total first-time enrollment.  

International Students Continue to Drive Growth

Contact:
Julia Kent, CGS: (202) 223-3791 / jkent@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC — The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) today reported a 3.5% one-year increase in first-time graduate enrollment between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014—the largest since 2009. Institutions responding to the CGE/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment & Degrees received more than 2.1 million applications for Fall 2014, extended over 850,000 offers of admission in Fall 2014, and enrolled nearly 480,000 incoming, first-time graduate students in fall 2014 graduate certificate, education specialist, master’s or doctoral programs—all new highs.

CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega emphasized that enrollment growth is critical to meeting the needs of the U.S. economy. “The increase in overall enrollments is good news, but the disparity between U.S. and international growth is a cause for concern.”

Ortega pointed to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting employers to add nearly 2.4 million jobs requiring a graduate degree or higher between 2012 and 2022. At this rate, Ortega said, additional master’s and doctoral degree holders are needed to make that projected result possible. “Greater investments in graduate education and research—supporting both domestic and international students—will be required to keep up with the demand for graduate level talent in the future,” Ortega said.

The contributions of international graduate students are becoming increasingly important to the U.S. graduate education enterprise. From 2004 to 2014, international students accounted for over two-thirds of the growth in first-time enrollment headcounts at U.S. graduate institutions. Furthermore, international students are more likely than their domestic counterparts to study in STEM fields. In Fall 2014, 65.9% of all temporary resident graduate students were enrolled in biological and agricultural sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, physical and earth sciences, or social and behavioral sciences. In contrast, only 27.1% of U.S. citizen/permanent resident graduate students were enrolled in these fields.

Other report findings include: 

Findings by field

• Applications to graduate programs in business increased 5.4% between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014.
• The largest one-year changes in graduate applications between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014 occurred in mathematics and computer sciences (22.0%) and engineering (10.5%).
• In terms of first-time enrollment, the fastest-growing fields were mathematics and computer science and engineering, growing at 21.3% and 10.7%, respectively, between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014.  
• First-time enrollment in education programs decreased 1.3% for Fall 2014.
• The largest fields by total enrollment were education and business, respectively accounting for 19% and 15% of total graduate enrollment at responding institutions in Fall 2014.

Findings by degree level

• Three-quarters (73.1%) of all graduate students in Fall 2014 were enrolled in programs leading to a master’s degree or a graduate certificate, according to survey respondents.
• Responding institutions awarded approximately 73,000 doctoral degrees, 526,000 master’s degrees, and 36,000 graduate certificates in 2013-14.
• Between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014, first-time enrollment increased by 1.9% at the doctoral-level and increased by 3.7% at the master’s-level.

Student demographics

• Nearly six in ten (57.9%) of all first-time graduate students in Fall 2014 were women, according to survey respondents.
• According to survey respondents, women earned nearly two-thirds (65.9%) of the graduate certificates, 59.0% of the master’s degrees, and 52.2% of the doctorates. Academic year 2013-14 marked the sixth straight year women earned a majority of doctoral degrees.
• Nearly one quarter (24.2%) of all first-time graduate students who were U.S. citizens and permanent residents were from racially/ethnically underrepresented populations. Although there were increases in first-time graduate enrollment between Fall 2013 and Fall 2014 among Hispanics/Latinos (6.8%) and Blacks/African Americans (2.0%), there was a 3.0% decline among American Indians/Alaska Natives.

About the report

Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2004 to 2014 presents the findings of an annual survey of U.S. graduate schools, co-sponsored by CGS and the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Board. It is the only annual national survey that collects data on graduate enrollment by all fields of study and is the only source of national data on graduate applications by broad field of study. The report, which includes responses from 636 institutions, presents statistics on graduate applications and enrollment for fall 2014, degrees conferred in 2013-14, and trend data for one-, five- and ten-year periods.

Foreign students' applications to American graduate schools climbed by 2% this year, driven in part by continued growth in applications from India, according to survey results released today by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). Although the overall increase of 2% represents a slower rate of growth compared to the 10% gain recorded last year, CGS's Jeff Allum said this may not be a cause for concern. “We saw two percent growth two years ago, and then we learned that did not impact the overall growth in the offers of admission and first-time enrollment,” Allum said. The application numbers included in today's report are preliminary, and the council will release survey data on final application numbers, offers of admission and new international enrollments later this year.