International Students in Geoscience Graduate Programs
by Megan Henly and Roman Czujko
Highlights
- Since 1985, the number of PhDs granted in the geosciences has risen 30% to 780 in 2002. Almost all of this increase may be attributed to international students coming to the US to earn their graduate degrees (Figure 3).
- Some fine fields within the geological sciences may be more susceptible to problems with new visa regulations, as a larger proportion of their graduate students come from abroad. Only about one-quarter of Atmospheric Science PhDs are non-US citizens; 40% of Earth Science PhDs were non-US citizens in 2002 (Figure 5).
- Almost half of all graduate departments in the geosciences who responded to our survey indicated that at least one international student experienced a visa problem in at least one of the last three years that resulted in the student missing the beginning of the academic term (Table 1).
- Based on data of first-year graduate students by the National Science Foundation, we can make a rough estimate that approximately 16% of foreign students who applied to US graduate programs in the geosciences did not make it here at all due to problems gaining admittance to the country.
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