Connecticut Colleges

Produce Surge Of Graduates

MANCHESTER — Recent enrollment increases in Connecticut’s colleges and universities have fueled a surge of college graduates. In the second consecutive year of growth, degrees awarded last spring jumped 6.6 percent to 32,499 graduates statewide, the largest annual gain in at least 16 years.

Higher Education Commissioner Valerie F. Lewis presented the annual totals to the Board of Governors for Higher Education during a December 17 meeting at Manchester Community College.

“We expected these gains based on growing enrollment, but the extent of this increase is truly impressive,” she said. “This is peak performance by our students and colleges that will nourish our workforce for years to come. All should be commended for work well done.”

She noted, however, that “nursing and teaching remain cause for concern.” It was important to focus on these fields, she said, and explore incentives to attract more people to these areas “for the sake of our children and the quality of all our lives.”

She continued, “And this underscores the need in the public system to rehire faculty in these critical workforce areas — an issue the legislature has asked us to monitor.”

The findings on degrees awarded in 2002–03 are contained in an annual report prepared by the Connecticut Department of Higher Education. The report shows that last spring’s total is up ten percent from a decade ago. The five most popular fields are business, education, social sciences and history, health professions, and the liberal arts. More than 56 percent of all degrees were awarded in these fields.

The report also found that the statewide gain was largely due to a 16 percent increase in the number of degrees awarded by the University of Connecticut. This also helped the public sector’s number of degrees by ten percent. The public system now produces just under half of all degrees awarded in Connecticut, and might soon award a majority of degrees for the first time since 1997–98.

In fields important to the state’s five key “industry clusters” of bioscience, aerospace, software/information technology, metal manufacturing, and maritime, degrees are up 21 percent in computer science, 12 percent in engineering, and 8 percent in biology, although the latter two fields continue to lag behind previous peaks. Physical sciences continue its general downward trend, though this year by only 0.5 percent.

Of Connecticut’s 15 teacher preparation programs, the four largest producers are in the public sector: Southern Connecticut State University (with 829 awards), Central Connecticut State University (557 awards), the Department of Higher Education’s Alternate Route to Certification (424 awards), and the University of Connecticut (367 awards).

Only 19 percent of the 3,651 teacher preparation awards were in the state’s nine critical shortage areas, however, with the fewest graduates in library media, bilingual education, and consumer and home economics. On contrast, awards in elementary and early childhood education accounted for 35 percent of all teacher preparation degrees.

Degrees across all health fields slipped 0.5 percent with nursing down a full 5.3 percent to just 753, significantly below the Department of Labor’s projected annual need of 1,235. Over the last five years, nursing degrees have fallen 14 percent.

The number of degrees awarded to minority students rose 10.3 percent but remain over-represented at the two-year level and not reflective of the state’s larger population.

Women continue to earn the vast majority of degrees (59 percent) and are the majority at every degree level except for doctorates and first-professionals, where they are expected to become the majority in the very near future.

Copies of the Department of Higher Education’s report, 2002–03 Degrees Conferred by Connecticut Institutions of Higher Education are available at www.ctdhe.org or by calling 860-947-1848.