The top 100 graduate degree conferred.

Extract

---

The top 100 graduate degree conferred.

To advance to the highest level of most professional and technical careers, an individual needs more than a bachelor's degree. The post-baccalaureate degrees we recognize in this edition of Diverse--master's, doctoral and first professional degrees--are more than just tickets to better-paying jobs. They provide the skills and credentials needed for careers that influence the direction of important social, political and economic institutions.

In academic year 2008-09, the institutions we include in this analysis-- the Title IV eligible institutions (i.e., accredited by a recognized agency and eligible to distribute federal aid) that are located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia and open to the general public (i.e., not a military-service institution)--awarded over 800,000 master's, doctoral and first professional degrees. Among these, nearly 167,000 were awarded to students of color, representing 20.5 percent of all post-baccalaureate degree recipients. Although this is not representative of the U.S. population at large, which is estimated at about 34 percent minority, it represents progress compared with 10 years ago (15.9 percent).

Each table in this edition, as well as those accessible through DiverseEducation.com, shows the total number of degrees awarded in academic year 2008-09 for a specific minority group or for total minorities with subtotals for women and men in that ethnic group. We also include the previous year/total along with two percentages: the percentage of degrees in that disciplinary area conferred to members of the target minority group and the percentage change from the previous year.

The data for this analysis are collected by National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from all U.S. postsecondary institutions as part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Set (IPEDS). The preliminary data we use are complete and accurate for institutions included in the analysis, which represent the vast majority of U.S. four-year colleges and universities. Although every institution is unique in its mix of degree programs and concentrations, they report their statistics to NCES using the Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) codes, a comprehensive taxonomy developed by NCES and updated regularly to reflect changes in curricula.

Although the past decade has been relatively stable, we are now in a period of transition for two important aspects of the data used in this analysis: the characterization of graduate degrees and of race/ ethnicity. For these dimensions, we are in the second of a three-year period wherein institutions are using a mix of the old and new coding categories. Fortunately, there is a way to translate the new into the old, which allows us to ma...

See the full content of this document

---