A new report from the Council on Graduate Schools provides data on graduate school enrollments by race and ethnicity. The report shows that in 2016, 48,300 Black students enrolled in graduate schools for the first time. They made up 9.3 percent of all first-time graduate students at U.S. universities. Of these first-time Black graduate students, 69.1 percent were women.
If we break down the data by broad academic field, we find that Blacks made up 18.3 percent of all first-time graduate students in public administration and more than 12 percent of all first-time graduate students in the social sciences, education, and business. But Blacks were only 5.6 percent of all first-time graduate students in engineering and 3.6 percent in the physical sciences.
If we look at total enrollments in U.S. graduate schools, we find that in 2016, there were 184,235 Black students. They made up 10 percent of all enrollments. There were 55,804 Black men and 126,820 Black women enrolled in graduate school.
In 2016, Blacks made up less than 6 percent of all graduate students in the arts and humanities, biological and agricultural sciences, engineering, and physical sciences.
The full report, Graduate Enrollment and Degrees, 2006 to 2016, may be downloaded by clicking here.
