2013 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase III: Final Offers of Admission and Enrollment

November 2013

The 2013 Phase III report of the CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey found a 10% increase in the first-time enrollment of international graduate students from 2012 to 2013, a growth that adds to 8% increases in this figure in each of the last two years. Total enrollment of international graduate students among responding institutions reached 220,000 in 2013.

Outcomes for Professional Science Master's Alumni: 2012/13

October 2013

Recent graduates of Professional Science Master’s (PSM) degree programs are reporting strong rates of employment and high income levels, according to the results of the third annual PSM Student Outcomes Surveyreleased by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). The report tracks initial hiring trends and perceived satisfaction among graduates of PSM degree programs between 2010 and 2013. The study was supported with funding from the Sloan Foundation.

CGS/GRE Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2002 to 2012

September 2013

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) reported a 1.8% increase in first-time enrollment between fall 2011 and fall 2012. More than 461,000 students enrolled for the first time in graduate certificate, education specialist, master’s, or doctoral programs for the fall 2012, according to institutions responding to the CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees, an annual survey that has been conducted since 1986.

2013 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase II: Final Applications and Initial Offers of Admission

August 2013

The 2013 Phase II report of the CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey has found that initial offers of admission from U.S. graduate schools to prospective international students increased 9% from 2012 to 2013, following an increase of 9% last year. The new data marks the fourth consecutive year of growth in international graduate admissions.

2013 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase I: Applications

April 2013

According to the 2013 Phase I report of the CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, the number of applications from prospective international students to U.S. graduate schools increased a mere 1% in 2013, following a 9% gain in 2012 and an 11% increase in 2011.

Enrollment and Degrees in Professional Science Master's Programs: 2011/12

February 2013

According to the Council of Graduate Schools' third annual report on enrollment and degrees in Professional Science Master's programs, total enrollment increased by 22% between 2010 and 2012.

International Applications Up 2% for Fall 2015

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

Washington, DC—New data from the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) provides a first-ever breakdown of international graduate applications by degree objective. The report, 2015 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey: Preliminary Applications, collects data on international graduate applications by all geographic regions and fields of study, revealing trends important to the graduate research enterprise and our understanding of the global competition for top talent. Conducted annually since 2004, the survey was expanded this year to distinguish between applications to programs at the doctorate and master’s & certificate levels. 

The findings show that degree objectives of international applicants vary dramatically by country of origin and field of study, and in some cases contrast with those of their domestic U.S. counterparts.

No sending country favored master’s studies more than India, where 84% of graduate applications were for admission to master’s & certificate programs. The master’s share of graduate applications was also large among students from China (64%) Saudi Arabia (60%), and Taiwan (52%). Smaller shares of graduate applications went to master’s programs from prospective international graduate students from Mexico (50%), Canada (45%), Brazil (43%), Europe (35%), and South Korea (30%).

Overall, international students applied to doctoral programs in higher proportion than their domestic U.S. counterparts. Thirty-seven percent of international graduate enrollments were in PhD programs, compared to only 17 percent among U.S. citizens and permanent residents, according to the CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees.

According to CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega, the additional data on degree objectives is illuminating for U.S. graduate schools, even as it leads to more questions about the goals and motivations of international graduate students. “Now that our international survey offers data by degree objective, we will have a more nuanced picture of the encouraging growth we have seen in international applications to U.S. graduate programs,” Ortega said. “Our challenge is to investigate what these new data can tell us about the market for advanced skills. Are students preparing for careers in the U.S. or at home after earning their degree? Are they drawn here by academic reputations, employment prospects, or professional advancement? How do economic conditions in the U.S. and abroad influence international graduate enrollments?”

Trends by country of origin

International graduate applications for Fall 2015 increased 2% from Fall 2014, for a total 676,484 applications received by the U.S. institutions responding to the survey. For the third consecutive year, applications from China were down (-2%) while applications from India posted double-digit growth (12%). China remains the largest source of prospective students for U.S. programs, representing 39% of all international graduate applications. India continues to narrow the gap between first- and second-largest source country, reaching 28% of international applications for Fall 2015. South Korea, the third-largest sending country, increased 4% after three straight years of declines.

Trends by field of study

Growth in applications was driven by engineering and physical & earth sciences, which gained 4% and 14%, respectively. Together these STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields account for 50% of all applications to U.S. graduate programs from prospective international students for Fall 2015. This makes international graduate students crucial to U.S. research and workforce needs. Experts (including CGS) have pointed out the American economy’s demand for advanced STEM skills is unlikely to be met by homegrown talent alone, as only 16% of U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolled in graduate programs are studying in STEM fields, according to the CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees.  

In another finding of the Preliminary Applications report, international applications to graduate programs in business fell 2%, the first decline in this field since the survey launched in 2004. Nevertheless, business was the third largest field of study, accounting for 13% of international graduate applications.

About the report

Findings from the 2015 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey: Preliminary Applications are based on an annual survey of international graduate student applications among U.S. institutions. Some responding institutions may continue to receive international applications after the completion of the report. For this reason the figures are preliminary. Final application, admission and enrollment figures will be reported in late 2015. Final application numbers have traditionally tracked very closely to the preliminary numbers. Analysis from the 2015 Preliminary Applications report includes responses from 377 schools, including 80% of the top 100 institutions awarding the largest number of degrees to international graduate students. Collectively, the respondents to this year’s survey award about 70% of the degrees granted to international graduate students in the U.S. The full report is available at http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Intl_I_2015_report_final.pdf.

Implications of "Big Data" for Graduate Education

Singapore
September 27-29, 2015

"Big Data" has been broadly defined as "the collection, aggregation...and analysis of vast amounts of increasingly granular data."¹ Contemporary debates about big data have raised both interest and concern in the global graduate community.

On the one hand, graduate leaders are accustomed to using data to inform decision-making and have expressed curiosity about the potential of big data experiments in graduate education, such as the collection of data on student learning in large online courses. On the other hand, big data have been associated with a number of problems that directly concern graduate leaders, posing a number of challenges and questions:

• How should large amounts of data be managed and stored?
• What methods should be used for analysis and interpretation?
• How do we think about informed consent and privacy rights in a big data context?
• How should we be preparing the next generation of graduate degree recipients to manage the world of big data?

Participants from 15 countries addressed these and other pressing questions at the 2015 Strategic Leaders Global Summit, a collaboration between CGS and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Event Materials:

• The Implications of Big Data for Graduate Education: A Proposal for Further Action
• Online Proceedings

Reference:
¹ Cate, F.H. (14 November 2014). The big data debate, Science 346(6211), 818.

[Photo credit: Singapore Tourism Board.]

CGS contributions to the Summit were supported by generous gifts from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and ProQuest.

Contact:
Nate Thompson, CGS: (202) 223-3791 / nthompson@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC — The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) today announced it will partner with ProQuest to explore the future of doctoral dissertations in a new Best Practice project, which will culminate in a workshop to be held in Washington, D.C. in January of 2016. The two-day workshop will convene graduate deans, publishers, library and information professionals, and other stakeholders to discuss how emerging technologies and other innovations in doctoral training may shape the Ph.D. dissertation of the future.

CGS plans to invite scholars and experts from different stakeholder groups to write short pieces on their view of the current state and future prospects of doctoral dissertations, and to collect these papers into an edited volume that will be distributed to CGS membership. “Ultimately, the goal will be to determine the questions that will require more sustained consideration by the graduate community,” explained CGS President, Suzanne Ortega. “What information do deans need to navigate the shifting landscape of doctoral dissertations? What kinds of questions should we be asking of our structures and policies, our staff and faculty partners, and our students?”

The changing nature of academic publishing and scholarly dissemination, new technologies, and new paradigms for graduate education have caused some to question whether the traditional doctoral dissertation should remain a strict requirement for the completion of the PhD. Might dissertations take different forms (such as through a series of blog posts or as collaborative work)? How might the dissertation be structured to reduce time to degree? What is needed to ensure nontraditional dissertations are archived sustainably? What, if any, differences exist among the broad disciplinary fields of humanities and social sciences and STEM dissertations? What roles do open access dissertations and embargoes play? These questions, among others, will continue to structure the conversation in the graduate community about doctoral dissertations.

ProQuest, renowned as a gateway for discovery and access to dissertations and theses from the world’s leading universities, will support this project. “This collaboration with CGS is both exciting and important,” said Niels Dam, ProQuest Vice President, Product Management. “As holder of the world's largest collection of dissertation and theses, and partner to over 3000 global institutions we are pleased to be sharing data, metrics, and on-the-ground insight that will inform the discussion about the next generation of doctoral dissertations and help the dissertations community prepare for the future.”

CGS plans to share results of the project in the spring of 2016.

CGS has compiled a list of resources for institutions, deans, and program directors seeking more information about new directions or issues in doctoral dissertations.

Graduate education in 2020 (Denecke, ed., 2009)

What is a dissertation? New models, methods, media (HASTAC Futures Initiative)

The evolving dissertation landscape (HASTAC Futures Initiative)

PhD: Is the doctoral dissertation obsolete? (Jump, 2015)

UKCGE response to Paul Jump, THE, on the future of the PhD thesis and whether it remains fit for purpose (UK Council for Graduate Education, 2015)

The amazing adventures of the comic-book dissertator (Dunn, 2013)

The dissertation can no longer be defended (Patton, 2013)

More PhDs are embargoing their dissertations—And ProQuest says that’s just fine (Patton, 2013)

Scholarly Publishing Roundtable (Association of American Universities, 2009-2012)

Open Access (Association of Research Libraries)

About 3MT (University of Queensland)

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, 2015)

Open Access and Dissertation Embargoes (Truschke, 2015)

Publishing a Revised Dissertation  (Truschke, 2015)

To Embargo Your Dissertation, Or Not? (Truschke, 2015)

Social Science and Humanities Dissertations

Report of the MLA task force on doctoral study in modern language and literature (Modern Language Association of America, 2014)

Beyond the dissertation monograph (Smith, 2010)

An agenda for the new dissertation (Smith, 2010)

Do open access electronic theses and dissertations diminish publishing opportunities in the social sciences and humanities? Findings from a 2011 survey of academic publishers (Ramirez, Dalton, McMillan, Read and Seamans, 2013)

Editors’ choice: AHA recommendations embargoing completed history PhD dissertations roundup (Digital Humanities Now, 2013)

Future Humanities (McGill University, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas)

STEM Dissertations

STEM education related dissertation abstracts: A bounded qualitative meta-study (Banning and Folkestad, 2012)

How to prepare a scientific doctoral dissertation based on research articles (Gustavii, 2012)

Dance your PhD contest; see also Why do scientists dance? (Bohannon, 2010)

Broadening notions of PhD career paths; team science; big data: so much about doctoral education is changing. Should dissertations change too? If so, how?

CGS is leading the graduate community in discussions about the future of the PhD dissertation, and we invite you to join us.

• Follow #DissFwd on Twitter
• Watch our Webinar on the future of the dissertation (September 2016)
• Attend a session on this topic at the CGS Annual Meeting (December 2016)

A project on the dissertation supported by ProQuest culminated in a workshop held in Washington, D.C. in January 2016. The two-day workshop convened key stakeholders to discuss how emerging technologies and other innovations in doctoral training may shape the Ph.D. dissertation of the future. Presentations were given by graduate deans, publishers, library and information professionals, scholars, and disciplinary representatives. 

Proceedings of the CGS Future of the Dissertation Workshop (January 2016)

GradEdge summary of the workshop (March 2016)

Additional Resources

• GradEdge opinion piece on rethinking dissertations (July 2015)
• CGS has compiled a list of resources for institutions, deans, and program directors seeking more information about new directions or issues in doctoral dissertations.

Press Releases

Thought-Leaders Convene to Consider the Future of the Doctoral Dissertation

CGS Teams with ProQuest to Explore the Future of Doctoral Dissertations

Contact

Julia Kent

In collaboration with:

Even as the number of U.S. workers who use science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) as part of their jobs has been steadily increasing, much more needs to be done in order to keep up with employer demands and to gain better participation of under-represented groups in STEM-related jobs. CGS's Julia Kent joined a panel of experts at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to discuss the financial barriers to attaining graduate degrees and the need for better career outcomes data on STEM graduates.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) examines the latest research report released by the Council of Graduate Schools: the Doctoral Initiative on Minority Attrition and Completion (DIMAC). Among the findings called out by JBHE was the slight improvement (to 50 percent) in the completion rates of black/African American STEM PhD students over the period studied.