Ph.D. Admissions Down 15% Over Past Year Amid Drop in International Applications
“The data also show that, while domestic students submitted a higher number of applications (+3%) to doctoral programs, international student applications to Ph.D. programs declined by 21%”
Lots of people would argue that we were turning out too many useless advanced degrees anyway.
The College Fix reports:
Ph.D. admissions fell 15% over past year as international applications drop
Ph.D. admissions fell 15 percent over the past year at 55 research universities in the U.S., according to the Association of American Universities Data Exchange.
“The data also show that, while domestic students submitted a higher number of applications (+3%) to doctoral programs, international student applications to Ph.D. programs declined by 21%,” the Association of American Universities reported.
The AAU is a membership organization of leading research universities. The AAU Data Exchange is a platform these members use to track enrollment and admissions trends across elite research institutions.
The AAU claims the decline is a significant cause for concern, as fewer doctoral students “means a thinner bench of innovators, fewer future scientific and medical breakthroughs, and a diminished capacity for the United States to compete against China and other nations in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy.”
However, a higher education expert disagrees.
Chance Layton, communications director for the National Association of Scholars, told The College Fix that, “The decline of [Ph.D.] programs is not yet a concern, as the labor market has not yet absorbed the excess graduates from previous years.”
Layton said he assumes this decline is abnormal and “is a clear result of the current, necessary tumult occurring in higher ed.”
He also said that while research cuts have contributed to the decline, the main cause is the lack of international student enrollment.
When asked why more private foundations are not intervening to fill the gap, Layton said that the “polemical answer is: They weren’t funding scholarship to begin with, just churning out scholar-activists.”
He also warned against the decline in liberal arts programs, specifically those that focus on Western Civilization and American History since they “safeguard the knowledge of our culture.”
He said that “many programs have given up that sort of work and have replaced scholarship with various sorts of political activism.”
Offering another perspective, Heritage Foundation spokesperson Marguerite Bowling told The Fix that whether the decline in Ph.D. enrollment is alarming “depends on its cause.”
“It may be possible that fewer students are pursuing Ph.Ds. because labor market opportunities have improved and the return on graduate education has dropped compared to immediate employment,” she said.
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