A new report from the Council on Graduate Schools provides data on graduate school enrollments by race and ethnicity. The report shows that in 2017, 49,482 Black students enrolled in graduate schools for the first time. They made up 11.9 percent of all first-time graduate students at U.S. universities. Of these first-time Black graduate students, 68.9 percent were women.
If we break down the data by broad academic field, we find that Blacks made up 18.8 percent of all first-time graduate students in public administration and more than 12 percent of all first-time graduates in the social sciences, education, and business. But Blacks were only 5.7 percent of all first-time graduate students in engineering and 3.7 percent in the physical and earth sciences.
If we look at total enrollments in U.S. graduate schools, we find that in 2017, there were 188,838 Black students. They made up 12.6 percent of all enrollments. There were 56,765 Black men and 130,006 Black women enrolled in graduate school.
In 2017, 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, 2007 to 2017, may be downloaded by clicking here.
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