Pitt's Swanson School One of Top Two in North America for Percentage of PhD Degrees Awarded to Women

The University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering was ranked among the top two in North America by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) for the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to women in 2009; the Swanson School was positioned just slightly behind the University of Iowa for this metric in ASEE’s 2009 Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges published in June. The annual publication provides statistics and profiles for all of the more than 400 engineering schools in the United States and Canada.

Of the PhD degrees the Swanson School awarded last year, 37.5 percent went to female doctoral students, only two percent less than PhD degrees awarded to women at the University of Iowa, according to the report. The ASEE only ranked the 103 institutions that awarded at least 25 PhD degrees last year. Pitt and Iowa ranked higher than the other top 10 universities in this category, which were Yale, Stony Brook, Duke, the University of Oklahoma, Rutgers, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Louisville. Northwestern and Washington universities were tied for 8th place.

The report is available on the ASEE Web site at www.asee.org/publications/profiles.