I'd like to know how many English majors have graduated from U.S.
colleges and universities in recent years. Just looking for a short,
quick answer.

NConner ?

The most-recent data from the U.S. government?s Education Department
is for the year 2001-2002 in the report below.  The report covers the
period from 1970-71 onward, so you can look at trend data.

The number of bachelors? degrees in English dropped in numbers AND in
percentage of all disciplines from 1970 to the mid-1980s, when they
started to rise again.   At the low point in 1980-81 English degrees
accounted for only 32, 254 diplomas ? down from almost twice that
number in 1970-71.  In the 1980-81 year they were only 3.45% of the
total number of degrees.  As you can see below, both number and
percentages have increased since then:

National Center for Education Statistics
?Bachelor?s Degrees Conferred, 2001-2002?

Bachelor?s:  53,162 (4.12%)
TOTAL: 1,291,900
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt252.asp

Masters: 7,268 (1.51%)
TOTAL: 482,118
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt253.asp

Doctorate: 1,446 (3.27%)
TOTAL: 44,160



Google search strategy:
?education statistics? U.S.


Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

---

Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 03 Aug 2005 16:54 PDT

Oops!  I missed the link to the page with the doctoral degrees:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt254.asp

So that's a total of about 62,000 per year, including Masters and
Doctorate degrees.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Thanks very much for your thorough and quick answer! Just what I was looking for.