The Hispanic American Presence in Physics and the Geosciences
by Roman Czujko and Starr Nicholson
Highlights
- Hispanic Americans are under-represented among college graduates relative to their proportion
among the college-age population (7% and 15%, respectively). Still more than 100,000 Hispanic
Americans earn bachelor's degrees each year, and their representation differs dramatically by field
of degree. Each year about 200 Hispanic Americans earn physics bachelors and about 130 Hispanic
Americans earn geoscience bachelors. Within the sciences, geoscience and physics have among the
lowest representation of Hispanic Americans
(Table 1).
- Almost all physics and geoscience departments have thus far played virtually no role in
the education of Hispanic Americans. Only about 2 dozen departments have awarded 6 or more
bachelor's degrees to Hispanic Americans in physics over the last 5 academic years combined. A
similarly small number of departments have awarded that many bachelor's degrees in the geosciences
to Hispanic Americans over the same 5 years
(Table 2).
- Over the 5 academic years from 2000 through 2004, 56% of all bachelor's degrees were earned
by women. Among Hispanic American college students, women play an even larger role, earning more
than 60% of all bachelor's degrees
(Table 3).
- Remarkably few Hispanic Americans earned PhDs in physics or the geosciences over the last three
decades, but the numbers are increasing
(Figure 1
and Figure 2).
- There are only about 220 Hispanic American physics faculty members in almost 800 departments
(Table 4).
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