For the second year in a row, Cornell has seen impressive increases in the number of entering Graduate School students, a reversal of the national trend that marked the middle years of the decade at elite universities, Walter I. Cohen, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, announced last week.
This fall, with a class of 1,409, Cornell enrolled a record number of entering graduate students, up 6 percent from a year ago and up 21 percent from two years ago, Cohen said.
Overall graduate enrollment increased to 4,116 students this year, up 3 percent from last year and up 5 percent from two years ago. Overall enrollment had declined 13 percent between 1991 and 1997.
"We are very pleased with these numbers," Cohen said. "The positive trends and record highs are too widespread to write off as wishful thinking. Things really have improved, and I believe we can anticipate continued increases for at least the next three years."
Further, Cohen said, quality continues to be a key factor in recruitment. "The directors of graduate study rate this year's entering class a little above last year's," he said.
President Hunter Rawlings praised Cohen's efforts. "This is an outstanding result," Rawlings said. "This enrollment success, and the fact that the quality of our graduate students continues to increase, will have a very positive effect on the vitality and intellectual life of the Cornell community, including the quality of education for our undergraduate students."
Cohen credited the success to intensified faculty recruiting efforts and to an expanded doctoral fellowship program for science and engineering.
Applications to the Graduate School also increased after several years of declines, Cohen said. "The strong national job market and bad academic job market have driven applications down at Cornell and our peer institutions for several years," he said. Applications dropped from a peak of 13,167 in 1992 to 11,553 in 1998, or 12 percent, before climbing 8.6 percent to 12,547 in 1999.
Other significant trends in overall graduate enrollment include:
·The physical sciences and engineering are up 10 percent from two years ago.
·In doctoral enrollment, the physical sciences and engineering are up 10 percent from two years ago.
·Enrollment in professional master's programs has increased 9 percent in the past two years. Nearly all the growth over the past two years, 12 percent, has occurred in the social sciences, as planned.
Significant trends in entering enrollment (fall 1999) include:
Progress toward increased diversity in graduate enrollment continues, Cohen said. Overall enrollment of underrepresented minorities has risen from 166, or 4.3 percent, in 1983, to 261, or 6.3 percent, in 1999.
"In 1998 we set records in both numbers and percentage, and in 1999 we exceeded both," Cohen said. "This represents real improvement, but the numbers are still low, and we need to continue to improve in this area." He added that the growth of the past two years has been fueled by increases in the Mexican-American and African-American groups.
Entering underrepresented minority graduate students total 101, or 7.2 percent, this year, by far the largest number and percentage of entering minority students ever enrolled, Cohen said. Of these, 43 are entering doctoral programs -- 7.4 percent of the entering doctoral class -- a record high as well. That number is up 17, or 65 percent, from 1997, and up 12, or 39 percent, from 1998.
"This trend strongly suggests future growth in both the overall graduate and the doctoral figures for underrepresented minority students," Cohen said.
Progress also has been made in gender diversity, he said. Total female graduate enrollment has risen from 33 percent in 1983 to a record 41 percent in 1999.
Doctoral enrollment of women has risen from 28 percent in 1978 to a record 41 percent in 1999.
Enrollment of women is now at 49 percent or above in the humanities, social sciences and in the biological sciences. "Biology crossed the 50 percent mark for the first time this year, and even the physical sciences and engineering, where improvement has been extremely difficult, reached a record 23 percent this year, up from 16 percent in 1983 and 18 percent in 1990," Cohen said.
"These new trends in graduate enrollment are encouraging news," Cohen said. "Better graduate students, especially doctoral students, mean better intellectual stimulation for the faculty, better assistance on faculty research -- in the long run, more research dollars and better research -- and better undergraduate instruction."
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