C&EN: Chemistry undergraduate enrollment falling faster than all programs

Friend of the blog Leigh Krietsch Boerner has a great feature in Chemical and Engineering News tackling the problem of undergraduate enrollment in chemistry. The whole article is worth reading, but this analysis by Leigh is the most important: 

...According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment at 4-year colleges in the US has dropped 3.2% since 2019. Enrollment in chemistry programs, meanwhile, has tumbled 23.2% over the same period.

In contrast, undergraduate enrollment in biology fell about the same amount as all undergraduate enrollment since 2019. And at a time when college enrollment is dropping and students are opting out of higher education, the number of biology degrees has actually increased since 2019. According to C&EN’s analysis, the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in biology has gone up 7.5% since 2019. During the same period, the number of bachelor’s degrees in all disciplines dropped by 2.6%, while chemistry degrees were down 14.1%.

As of the end of the 2023–24 academic year, only a few hundred more schools offered degrees in biology than in chemistry. And in the past 5 years, the number of programs in each discipline has fallen at about the same rate. But according to C&EN’s analysis, US higher education institutions awarded 132,465 biology degrees in 2023, compared with 12,567 chemistry degrees. And schools don’t seem to be ending their biology programs.

It seems reasonable to conclude this isn't going to do great things for chemistry as a field in the United States, nor chemistry employment (for chemists) nor for the number of non-R1 chemistry faculty positions. Here's hoping that we see a turnaround. Read the whole thing.