2020 Departmental Profile Report

Introduction

This report serves as a comprehensive summary of data pertaining to Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (MSS) departments within four-year colleges and universities across the United States as of the fall of 2020. Compiled through a census of these departments, the information provided encompasses details such as faculty composition, departmental leadership, undergraduate and graduate course enrollments, as well as the number of degrees conferred at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.⁠¹ In this report, data are reported in the aggregate by department grouping. Definitions of terms such as “Mathematical and Statistical Sciences,” “Math,” and “Stats,” along with a description of the faculty categories, are provided in the Methodology section of this report.

¹

Imputation was used in cases where there was missing data. All 2020 Master’s department data were imputed because no questionnaires were returned. See the Methodology section for more information.

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Key Departmental Profile Takeaways

Doctoral Math departments

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Over one-third (35%, n = 9,205) of MSS faculty were in Doctoral Math departments.

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42% (n = 17,229) of undergraduate degrees were granted by Doctoral Math departments.

Statistics & Biostatistics departments

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Biostatistics programs had the lowest undergraduate to full-time faculty ratio (4:1).

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The highest ratios of graduate enrollment per full-time tenured and tenure-eligible faculty member were in Statistics (34:1) and Biostatistics (32:1) departments, respectively.

Bachelor’s departments

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From 2019 to 2020, the number of full-time faculty increased 5% from 25,323 to 26,519. The number of full-time faculty in bachelor’s-level programs increased 9% during this time from 8,482 to 9,203.

Master’s departments

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Master’s departments had one of the highest proportions of part-time faculty (33%, n = 2,259).

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Master’s departments had one of the lowest graduate student to faculty ratios (7:1).

Gender disparities across MSS departments

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35% of MSS faculty identified as women (n = 13,402).

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Across programs, Doctoral Math departments at large, private institutions had the lowest percentage of women tenured or tenure-eligible faculty (14%, n = 93).

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27% (n = 160) of all MSS department chairs identified as women. There were no women chairs of Doctoral Math Private Large departments.

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Biostatistics departments had the largest proportions of women undergraduate (50%, n = 54) and master’s (54%, n = 486) degree earners.

MSS Faculty

Full-time faculty

From 2019 to 2020, the number of full-time faculty increased by 5% from 25,323 to 26,519. The number of full-time faculty in bachelor’s-level programs increased 9% during this time from 8,482 to 9,203. This follows declines in those areas from the previous year. Table 1 provides a longitudinal overview of full-time MSS faculty by department grouping.

All MSS faculty

In the fall of 2020, the total number of MSS faculty was 35,191 (SE = 824). 41% (n = 14,269) of those MSS faculty were in Bachelor’s departments and one-third (34%, n = 11,454) were in Doctoral Math departments. As illustrated in Figure 1, 49% (n = 17,375) of MSS faculty held full-time tenured/tenure-eligible roles, 25% (n = 8,945) were in part-time faculty positions, and 27% (n = 9,350) were in non-tenure-eligible or other full-time positions. Bachelor’s (34%, n = 4,911) and Master’s (33%, n = 2,259) departments had the highest proportions of part-time faculty.⁠²

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Note that “Doctoral Math” includes Doctoral Math Public Large, Medium, and Small; Doctoral Math Private Large and Small; and Doctoral Applied Math departments. The “Statistics & Biostatistics” group includes both Doctoral Statistics and Doctoral Biostatistics departments.

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Figure 1.

Faculty position by department grouping, 2020.

Faculty by gender identity

Figure 2 displays the faculty gender percentages by department grouping. It should be noted that the percentages for men faculty are much higher than for women faculty across all department groups. When looking at individual Doctoral Math department groupings, Doctoral Biostatistics departments (42%, n = 617) had the highest percentages of women faculty, while Doctoral Math Private Large departments had the lowest percentage (15%, n = 224). Of all MSS faculty in the fall of 2020, 35% (n = 13,402) identified as women, and 65% (n = 24,730) identified as men.⁠³

³

Non-binary/Other gender data are not reported to protect confidentiality.

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Figure 2.

Faculty gender by department grouping, 2020.

The highest proportions of women faculty by position, compared to men faculty, were in the non-tenure-eligible (47%, n = 3,662) and part-time (43%, n = 3,863) faculty groups, while the lowest percentages were in tenured/tenure-eligible (27%, n = 4,778) and postdoc (26%, n = 443) positions. Figure 3 provides a concise summary. While 51% (n = 12,697) of all men faculty were in tenured/tenure-eligible positions, the majority of women faculty (56%, n = 7,525) were in non-tenure-eligible and part-time positions (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Faculty position by gender identity, 2020.

MSS chairs

Of all MSS department chairs in the fall of 2020, 27% (n = 160) identified as women, and 73% (n = 440) identified as men. Bachelor’s-level departments had the highest percentage of women-identified department chairs. Notably, only 9% of Doctoral Applied Math programs and no Large Private Doctoral Math programs had chairs who identified as women.

Undergraduate Course Enrollments and Degrees Awarded

In the fall of 2020, the total undergraduate course enrollment in MSS departments was 2,538,764 (SE = 96,528), reflecting an increase of 14% from the previous year. Table 2 illustrates that the increase was primarily among Bachelor’s departments, in which undergraduate course enrollments grew by 43% from 539,060 to 773,343 from 2019 to 2020, returning to levels more comparable to 2018.

The highest ratios of undergraduate enrollment per full-time faculty member were in Public Large (109:1), Medium (136:1), and Small (129:1) Math departments and Master’s (116:1) departments (Figure 4). The lowest enrollment to faculty ratio was in Biostatistics (4:1) departments, followed by Private Large Math (43:1) departments.

Figure 4.

Undergraduate enrollment per full-time faculty member.

A total of 41,277 (SE = 1,956) MSS undergraduate degrees were conferred in 2020, up 19% from the previous academic year (Table 3). Between 2019 and 2020, the number of MSS undergraduate degrees conferred at Statistics departments increased 37% from 2,503 to 3,419. In 2020, 42% (n = 17,229) of undergraduate degrees were granted by Doctoral Math departments and 37% (n = 15,197) by Bachelor’s departments.

MSS undergraduate degrees awarded by gender identity

Of undergraduate degrees awarded in 2020, 40% were earned by women students, and 60% were earned by men students.⁠⁴ The largest proportion of women degree earners was in Biostatistics departments (50%, n = 54). There was little change in the proportions of women and men receiving undergraduate degrees by departmental group from 2018 to 2020 (Figure 5).

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Non-binary/Other gender data are not reported to protect confidentiality.

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Figure 5.

Undergraduate degrees by gender, 2018–2020.

Graduate Course Enrollment and Master’s Degrees Awarded

In the fall of 2020, the total graduate course enrollment in MSS departments was 112,253 (SE = 6,995) reflecting a slight decrease from the previous year. Table 4 provides a year-over-year overview of graduate student enrollment for graduate degree-granting departments. Almost all graduate course enrollments were in Doctoral Math (47%, n = 53) and Statistics & Biostatistics (41%, n = 46) departments.

The highest ratios of graduate enrollment per full-time tenured and tenure-eligible faculty member were in Statistics (34:1) and Biostatistics (32:1) departments (Figure 6). The lowest enrollment to faculty ratio was Private Small Math (6:1) departments, followed by Master’s (7:1) departments.

Figure 6.

Graduate enrollment per full-time tenured and tenure-eligible faculty member.

A total of 9,432 (SE = 701) MSS master’s degrees were conferred in 2020, up 25% from the previous academic year. The number of master’s degrees conferred at institutions in the Statistics department grouping increased by 46% from 2019 to 2020.

Master’s degrees awarded by gender identity

Of master’s degrees awarded in 2020, 43% (n = 3,532) were earned by women students, and 57% (n = 4,740) were earned by men students.⁠⁵ This is comparable to 2019, during which 42% ($n = 3{,}174$) of master’s degrees were earned by women (Figure 7). The largest proportion of women degree earners was in Biostatistics departments (57%, n = 348). There was little change from year to year.

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Non-binary/Other gender data are not reported to protect confidentiality.

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Figure 7.

Master’s degrees by gender, 2018–2020.

Methodology

Response rates

The questionnaire on which this report was based, “Departmental Profile,” was sent to all doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s Mathematical and Statistical Sciences departments in the United States.

In this report, Mathematical and Statistical Sciences departments are those in four-year institutions in the US that refer to themselves with a name that incorporates (with a few exceptions) “Mathematics” or “Statistics” in some form. For instance, the term includes, but is not limited to, departments of “Mathematics,” “Mathematical Sciences,” “Mathematics and Statistics,” “Mathematics and Computer Science,” “Applied Mathematics,” “Statistics,” and “Biostatistics.” Also, Mathematics (Math) refers to departments that (with exceptions) have “Mathematics” in the name; Stats refers to departments that incorporate (again, with exceptions) “Statistics” or “Biostatistics” in the name but do not use “Mathematics.” Listings of the actual departments that comprise these groups are available on the AMS website at https://www.ams.org/annual-survey/groupings.

Table 6 provides a snapshot of survey response rates for the fall of 2020 by department grouping.⁠⁶ The response rates were calculated by dividing the number of surveys received by the total number of institutions to which surveys were distributed within each department grouping.

⁶

All 2020 Master’s department data were imputed because no questionnaires were returned.

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Faculty categories

Departments were asked to report any faculty member considered full-time in the institution for the academic year and at least half-time in the department. Each faculty member was reported in exactly one of the following categories.

Tenure-track faculty includes full-time faculty who hold tenured/tenure-eligible positions (i.e., only those individuals who are tenured full professors, other tenured, and tenure-eligible faculty).

Postdoctoral faculty includes full-time faculty with teaching and/or research responsibilities, but for a strictly limited term of employment (i.e., those individuals who hold a temporary position primarily intended to provide an opportunity to continue training or to further research experience).

Non-tenure-track faculty includes full-time faculty eligible for benefits and with an appointment that lasts at least one academic year. These faculty hold appointments that are renewable (potentially unlimited), fixed-term but not renewable, or temporary. Typical titles for these positions are lecturer, senior lecturer, instructor, senior instructor, associate/assistant/full teaching professor, professor of the practice, or clinical professor, and similar titles for research-only faculty.

Part-time faculty includes individuals hired term-by-term, paid by the course, and/or those in phased retirement.

Imputation and estimation

For most of the data collected on the Departmental Profile form, annual changes for any department were small compared to the variation among the departments within a department grouping. Therefore, available survey responses for each department from the previous year were used to replace missing data. After the inclusion of prior responses, the remaining nonresponses were imputed via an Expectation-Maximization imputation procedure⁠⁷ to derive the estimates reported for the entire grouping. Estimates for Master’s departments are entirely based on the imputation of 2019 carry-forward data because there were no 2020 data for those departments. Some values were nulled because of limitations of the imputation model source data. Historical data from before 2019 were obtained from previous reports which may have used different methods for imputing missing data. As a result of these approaches to missing data, estimates provided in this report may differ from those obtained from other sources, such as NCES.

⁷

P. D. Allison, Missing Data, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2001.

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For some key estimates, standard errors were calculated from variability in the data. These can be used to demonstrate how close estimates were to the true value for the population. For example, the number of full-time faculty in the Master’s group was estimated at 4,501 with a standard error of 176. This means the actual number of full-time faculty in the Master’s group is most likely around 4,501 plus or minus two standard errors, or between 4,149 and 4,853.

Estimates were also given for totals and subtotals, such as the total number of full-time faculty. For example, an estimate of the total number of full-time faculty in all groups except Statistics and Biostatistics was 23,928, with a standard error of 717. Note that a reported total or subtotal may differ slightly from the sum of the individual entries or from the same total in a different data table. All individual table entries were rounded imputed estimates of the individual parameters, which may lead to differences when summed as a result of this rounding (as the sum of rounded numbers is not always the same as the rounded sum). The same may apply to standard errors calculated from different combinations of imputed values.