1 Previous editions of this report provided the number of degree-granting institutions in the United States. This edition includes non-degree-granting institutions as well because many of them confer only sub-associate certificates, awards that take less than 2 years to complete. Although postsecondary institutions confer other certificates as well, the statistics in this report include only sub-associate certificates, referred to as certificates throughout the report.

2 The student populations described in MSI designations do not necessarily map uniformly to standard race and ethnicity categories used by federal statistical agencies. Furthermore, these student populations can include a mix of racial and ethnic groups that vary in their degree of representation in S&E higher education.

3 The categories of MSIs discussed in this report were determined using the 2022 eligibility matrix developed by the U.S. Department of Education to award federal funding to support institutions serving these groups of students. See https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/idues/eligibility.html#el-inst for annual lists of institutions designated as eligible for these funds.

4 All comparative statements in this report derived from sample surveys have undergone statistical testing; unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are statistically significant at the 0.10 significance level.

5 All statistics in this paragraph refer to students in degree programs with declared majors. Other students are excluded from the analysis. Percentages of students majoring in S&E and S&E-related fields are calculated from unrounded values and may differ from rounded values provided in Table SHED-2.

6 Community colleges are defined here as publicly controlled institutions that confer awards up to the at least 2-year but less than 4-year level. This includes both associate’s degrees and sub-associate’s certificates taking less than 2 years to complete.

7 The aggregation of fields of study in the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS), and Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B) differs from the NCSES Taxonomy of Disciplines, which is used to classify awards from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

8 S&E degrees discussed here are categorized by institution location and include postsecondary degrees awarded to all students, regardless of their residence or where they earned a high school credential.

9 Differences between 2012 and 2016 were not statistically significant for certificate and associate’s degree students in psychology and other social sciences, nor were they so for doctoral students in health and medicine.

10 Differences were not statistically significant for certificate and doctoral degree students in psychology and other social sciences, nor were they so for doctoral students in health and medicine.

11 Differences were not statistically significant between master’s and certificate students in psychology and other social sciences, nor were they so between master’s and doctoral degree students in health and medicine.

12 Estimates of online coursetaking in 2012 and 2016 were derived from student interviews collected as part of NPSAS. At the time this report was prepared, the IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey was the only source of data on distance education for 2020. The IPEDS Fall Enrollment Survey does not disaggregate by comparable fields of study, uses different terminology, and is based on institution, rather than student, reports.

13 From 2010 to 2020, the U.S. Hispanic or Latino population grew by 11.6 million, whereas the combined non-Hispanic population grew by 11.1 million. In 2020, the median age of the total population was 38.8 years, and the median age of the Hispanic or Latino population was 30.0 years. For more information, see U.S. Census Bureau (2023).

14 Grants include need- and merit-based funding such as scholarships, Pell Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and state, local, and institution-provided grants. The term grant applies to any aid the student is not expected to repay.

15 For more information on the OPT program, see U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS/ICE 2022a). In 2022, the list of fields eligible for the STEM OPT Extension was expanded. NCSES classifies many of the fields in the DHS STEM Designated Degree Program List as S&E, but the NCSES S&E and DHS STEM definitions are not identical. For more information, see U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS/ICE 2022b).

16 These data are tabulated from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) and are not comparable to the IIE data cited earlier. SEVIS data used in this report are limited to foreign national students on F-1 visas who are enrolled in person at U.S. higher education institutions and exclude individuals approved for OPT. Additionally, these data are not comparable to SEVIS data analyzed in earlier versions of this report due to a change in the taxonomy of S&E fields.

17 The 35% share is derived from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) IPEDS and is similar to that reported by the NCSES Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), according to which temporary visa holders accounted for 37% of U.S. S&E research doctorates in 2021 (NCSES SED 2021: Table 3-3).

18 These data are from the NCSES SED and differ from doctorate data from the NCES IPEDS used elsewhere in this report. The SED collects country of origin for degree recipients on temporary visas, whereas IPEDS does not.

19 Surveys of doctoral students in India in 2020 reported severe disruptions in funding, limited access to facilities and equipment, and stalled progress on field work. See “​India’s PhD Students Want Fellowship Tenures Extended” (2021) and R, Roy, and Das (2022). In September 2021, India’s Ministry of Education announced that it was postponing the requirement of a doctoral degree for assistant professor appointments due to disruptions in doctoral education during the COVID-19 pandemic (Niazi 2021).