Roster of Astronomy Departments with Enrollment and Degree Data, 2023

The Astronomy Roster is a listing of all degree-granting astronomy departments in the US. It includes enrollment data for the fall of 2023 and the degrees conferred during the 2022-23 academic year. The findings in this report come from AIP’s annual departmental survey of Enrollments and Degrees.

There were 934 astronomy bachelor’s degrees awarded at US institutions in the class of 2023. This all-time high continues a decade and a half trend of increases in the number of astronomy bachelors awarded and represents an overall increase of almost 300% since the class of 2009 (see figure on page 7).

There were 225 astronomy PhDs conferred in the class of 2023 which represents a 7% increase from the previous year and an all-time high for astronomy PhDs conferred in the US (see figure on page 7). The astronomy PhDs reported in this roster do not include PhDs in astrophysics that were awarded at physics departments that do not offer an explicit astronomy degree. Those degrees are included in the data reported in the Roster of Physics Departments.