Women and Minority Students Now More Likely to Take Physics

Women almost equally represented; minorities jump to almost 25% representation.

By Sam Ofori
Inside Science News Service
October 17, 2008

Female and underrepresented minority students have come a long way in bridging the historical gap in enlistment in a high school physics course, the American Institute of Physics reports in a recently-published survey. High school physics classes, which have historically had a higher percentage of male students, are now likely to contain equal numbers of males and females.

Today's Physics Class

Breakout of cultural groups taking physics class in high school Credit: American Institute of Physics

About one in four African-Americans who graduated from high school in 2005 had taken at least one physics class prior to graduation. This is a significant increase from the one in ten who had done so in 1990.

Hispanic American participation in high school physics showed a similarly impressive increase from 10% in 1990 to 24% in 2005.

Generally, Physics More Popular

Enrollment in physics classes since 1948 (all students) Credit: American Institute of Physics

The report also notes that more students overall are signing up to take a high school physics course. In 2005, a third of high school seniors had taken at least one physics course before graduation. This is a significant increase from twenty years earlier when only about one in five students took physics in high school.

Furthermore, the number of students taking advanced physics (an honors, advanced placement, or second-year course) has almost tripled in the past fifteen years. The report also found that more than seventy percent of current high school physics teachers have a physics degree or extensive experience teaching physics, or both.

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This story is provided for media use by the Inside Science News Service, which is supported by the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit publisher of scientific journals. Contact: Jim Dawson, news editor, at jdawson@aip.org.