Women awarded doctorates in science and engineering made up a vast proportion of the increase in the number of Ph Ds bestowed in the US last year. The number of doctorates awarded by US universities rose by 1.6 percent between 2008 and 2009, according to the National Science Foundations annual Survey of Earned Doctorates. The total, now nearly 50,000, represents a 20.6 percent rise on 1999 levels.The number of non-science Ph Ds awarded rose by 1 percent in 2009 to 16,086, while the number of science and engineering doctorates rose by 1.9 percent to 33,470. The latter was accounted for entirely by a 4.8 percent rise in the number of women earning science Ph Ds. This figure now stands at 13,600, a rise of 38 percent since 2004, compared with a 21 percent increase for men (now almost 20,000). The number of women awarded Ph Ds in non-science subjects has also risen by more than 3 percent since 2004, compared with a decline of almost 1 percent among men.
Meanwhile, the proportion of doctorates being awarded to non-white Americans is also growing thanks to increases of 34 percent and 16 percent since 2004 in the number of black and ethnic minority scholars earning doctorates in science and the humanities respectively. For white candidates, the same period saw the number of Ph Ds awarded increase by 22 percent in the sciences and fall 0.9 percent in the humanities.
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus of George Washington University, says the figures reflect the growth in participation among women and ethnic minorities at undergraduate levels and will probably continue to rise. According to him, this trend reflects a quiet revolution that means white people would soon become a minority in the US. One may anticipate one day seeing the language in job postings encouraging applications from white male candidates who are underrepresented in academic posts, he says.
The overall rise in doctoral numbers is also being driven by increasing demand from people of Asian origin, particularly women. Professional and doctoral degrees are a ladder out of the working class: that is a classic in American sociology for first-generation families, says Trachtenberg.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)