For the first time in seven years the number of new students starting graduate school dropped last fall, according to a report released by the Council of Graduate Schools this week.
From 2009 to 2010, enrollees shrank by 1.1 percent. The number had grown 5.5 percent the previous year, the group reported.
The drop comes at a time when economists say 2.5 million jobs will require advanced degrees by 2018, the report says, adding that "our numbers are going in the wrong direction."
It's also a time when many have said specialized education is becoming more important — that in certain fields, a master's degree is becoming what a bachelor's degree used to be.
Total graduate enrollment decreased in education, business and public administration and services, the group found.
Traditionally during economic downturns, many flock to undergraduate and graduate programs, but since the downturn has lasted so long, Debra W. Stewart, president of the council who put out the report, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that people who have a job are less likely to leave it because "they believe they have one of the few jobs left out there."
It's also alarming that the number of new domestic graduate school students dropped (-1.2 percent) while the number of international students rose (4.7 percent), the report states, adding that traditionally the growth of new domestic grad students is double that of international ones.
"The decline in domestic students is very bad news for the nation's economic future," Stewart told the New York Times. "Higher education and, increasingly, graduate education are what drives prosperity, and if we get to the point where only people with significant bank accounts can afford graduate education, the country is doomed."
The Council of Graduate Schools study also found that in 2009-10 women earned about two-thirds of the graduate certificates, 60 percent of the master's degrees and 52 percent of the doctorates. That was the second year in a row that women earned the majority of the degrees at the doctoral level.
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