The National Science Foundation has issued a report on the outcomes two years later for people who received science and engineering degrees at American colleges and universities in 2001-2. The report, “Characteristics of Recent Science and Engineering Graduates: 2003,” contains reams of statistics on, among other things, the characteristics of the 2001-2 recipients of bachelor’s and master’s degrees; what kinds of jobs they held, if any, in 2003, and who employed them; what subsequent education they pursued, if any; and how much money they were making.

The report complements one issued in July by the NSF that found that people who earned such degrees considered the training to be “important to their job,” even if they didn’t end up in a scientific or engineering field.

According to the report, women outnumbered men, 56 percent to 44 percent, among recipients of bachelor’s degrees in science, on the strength of their dominance in fields of social science, especially psychology. But men outnumbered women in engineering fields, 79 percent to 21 percent. In both science and engineering, men outearned women. The median salary for men was 17 percent higher in the sciences. And in both science and engineering women were disproportionately represented among those either unemployed or not seeking work.

In a table breaking down the statistics by race, the report says that while white students accounted for about two out of three bachelor’s degree recipients, their rate of non-employment two years later was lower than that of other racial groups. Even Asian-American recipients, who accounted for 14 percent of scientists, had higher rates of non-employment, although their median salary was 19 percent higher than for white recipients. The table listed a composite “Underrepresented minority” group, about 16 percent of scientists and 12 percent of engineers, that comprised American Indian, Alaska Native, black, and Hispanic recipients of degrees.