African Americans in physics

The already tiny fraction of US physics bachelor’s degree recipients who are African American has gone down in recent years. At the PhD level, however, the proportion is creeping up, according to a 2008 survey conducted by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).

African Americans earned 144 physics bachelor’s degrees, or 2.9% of the total, in 2008. The number was lower than two years earlier; the AIP report says that finding is “especially troubling as the total number of physics bachelor degrees awarded to all students has increased dramatically over the last decade.’

Across all fields, that growth is true for African Americans, despite the slip in their numbers in physics. In the seven states where African Americans constitute 21% or more of the total population (compared with 12.4% nationwide), 19% or more of recent bachelor’s degree recipients were African American. In 2008 the national average was 9%, of which 66% were women.

A total of 35 400 PhDs were awarded in physics from 1979 to 2008. Just 288 went to African Americans, but 30% of those were awarded in the last six years of the three-decade period. A similar trend is seen in the geosciences.

In 2008, 85% of US physics departments had no African Americans on their faculties.

These and other findings are available in the report, African Americans Among Degree Recipients in Physics and Geoscience, which can be viewed at http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/blacks2010.pdf .