Female Supremacy Articles - Page 20

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Badger Herald

2003 December 9

The percentage of males who earned doctorates in 2002 has dropped steadily since 1997 by nearly 15%. While women earned almost 51% of doctorates in 2002, the total number of awarded degrees is falling, the report found.

American students earned the lowest number of Ph.D.s in a decade last year at 39955, a decrease of 2% from the previous year and a 6% drop in the last 5 years.

But experts have differing opinions about the trends these statistics show.

Joan Burrelli, senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, said she felt the drop in males awarded doctorates led to the higher female doctorate percentage.

"There's been a drop in the white college age population," Burrelli said. "But the people who are doctorate recipients have been in school for seven to 10 years, so [the percentage of men earning Ph.D.s] is going up now."

Burrelli said although the numbers of men awarded doctorates decreased, not all male groups are on the decline.

"It's the predominantly white males that have dropped," she said. "For the most part, minority males [awarded doctorates] have continued to go up."

Nearly 19% of American doctorates were awarded to minority groups in 2002, the largest percentage in history; 40% of the doctorates awarded to African American students were in education, while 1/3 of all doctorates earned by Asian Americans was in life sciences.