As encouraging as the numbers of minorities earning advanced degrees may have been, gender differences across racial lines continue to persist at the master’s and doctoral levels. In the print edition of the Top 100 Graduate Degree Producers, released July 12, Diverse reviews the increase and decrease in minority students at the graduate level. The new online tables look at the popularity of various disciplines by race and gender. With the additional online analysis, we review how gender within ethnic groups affects the popularity of each discipline, and the patterns associated with that.

About the data: it is provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and allows us to look at the Top 100 institutions that awarded the most graduate degrees to minorities during the 2005-2006 academic years. The list only includes institutions eligible for Title IV funding that are located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

NCES collects the data through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Program Completer’s Survey. Institutions provide information about the number of degrees and other formal awards conferred in academic, vocational and continuing professional education programs. Institutions use a standard set of federal categories to report student race/ethnicity: non-resident alien (i.e., not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident); Black; American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Hispanic; White; and race/ethnicity unknown. Only U.S. citizens or permanent residents are included in the “minority” categories; therefore, international students are excluded.

Several databases have been established to further understand the gender and racial differences between disciplinary programs at the master’s, doctoral and first-professional levels. The databases below illustrate overall popularity in disciplinary programs by race/ethnicity and by gender within race/ethnicity, as well as largest numerical changes in disciplinary areas of post baccalaureate degrees awarded over the past 10 years.  In the chart entitled “Popularity in Disciplinary Areas of Post-baccalaureate Degrees Awarded in 2005-06,” the first column after discipline indicates the total number of graduates in 2005-2006, while the second column illustrates the rank order of that particular discipline.