Impact of the 2024 GSS Institutional Eligibility Review on Counts of GSS Master’s Students

In preparation for the 2024 Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS), the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the U.S. National Science Foundation conducted a comprehensive eligibility review of 687 institutions in the 2023 GSS with six or fewer organizational units.^​ The GSS is an annual census of all U.S. academic institutions that grant research focused degrees in science, engineering, and health (SEH), and it provides information on the training of the future labor force in SEH fields.

The eligibility review was focused on identifying whether institutions offered at least one research-based master's or doctoral program in SEH. Of the 687 institutions in the 2023 GSS that were reviewed, 53 were declared ineligible for the 2024 GSS data collection. When these 53 newly ineligible institutions were excluded from the 2023 data, analysis showed that 0.8% fewer graduate students and 1.3% fewer master's students would have been reported in the 2023 GSS (figure 1). In 2023, these newly ineligible institutions reported 6,909 of the 818,095 graduate students in the GSS (table 1). However, the impact of excluding these students would not have been distributed evenly by institution type or field of study.

The first section of this InfoBrief reports on the impetus, process, and outcomes, as well as the resulting removal of 53 institutions during the 2024 GSS eligibility review of institutions. The second section describes the impact that the contraction of the GSS universe would have had on reported counts and longitudinal trends in the 2023 data if the newly ineligible institutions had not been included. The last section includes additional information about the GSS, including the limitations of the data.

This section describes the rationale for the 2024 GSS eligibility review of institutions, the process for reviewing institutions and organizational units, and the outcome of that review on GSS eligibility. As a census, the GSS reviews new institutions for inclusion annually and periodically reviews current GSS institutions to determine if they remain eligible. Together, these reviews keep the GSS universe comprehensive and accurate.

GSS-eligible institutions are those with research-based master's or doctoral programs in science, engineering, and health, which are identified based on the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) codes.^​ Research-oriented programs typically will have research-related coursework and require original research, such as a thesis or a dissertation, with a stated goal to prepare students for continuing to a higher degree or pursuing a career in research. Practitioner-oriented programs prepare students to enhance their career or professional practice or prepare them for licensure, do not include original research, and typically include a professional capstone or portfolio rather than a thesis or dissertation. Institutions that offer only practitioner-oriented programs are not eligible for the GSS.^​

This section uses 2023 GSS data to describe the statistical impact of not collecting data from these 53 newly ineligible institutions if the change had happened in 2023. These analyses describe the anticipated change in trends for 2024, based on the 2023 data with these institutions included (as originally published) and without these institutions, as a way to simulate the possible statistical impact on the 2024 estimates when dropping these institutions.

Conducted since 1966, the GSS is an annual survey of all academic institutions in the United States that grant research-based master's or doctoral degrees in SEH fields. The survey, sponsored by NCSES and by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), collects the total number of master's and doctoral students, postdoctoral appointees, and doctorate-level nonfaculty researchers by field of study or research, demographic characteristics, and other characteristics, such as source of financial support. The 2023 GSS collected data from 22,802 organizational units (departments, programs, affiliated research centers, and health care facilities) at 687 eligible institutions and their affiliates in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The 2023 GSS unit response rate was 97.8%. An overview of the survey is available at the survey page.

Although the potential impact on estimates by removing ineligible institutions from 2023 data has been demonstrated, the impact on 2024 data may show different patterns. The change will be indicated in the upcoming technical notes and InfoBrief on the 2024 GSS. GSS health fields are collected under the advisement of NIH. These GSS fields are about a third of all health fields in the Department of Education's CIP taxonomy. NIH information on trends seen within these selected health fields can be found at https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/.

The full set of data tables from the 2023 survey and the associated data release InfoBrief are available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/graduate-students-postdoctorates-s-e/2023#data. Data are also available in NCSES's interactive data tool. For more information about the survey, contact NCSES.

NCSES has reviewed this product for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and approved its release (NCSES-DRN24-079).

1 Organizational units (units) include departments, programs, affiliated research centers, and health care facilities. Units are determined based on unique unit name and GSS code combinations; thus, units can include multiple Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) codes.

2 Eligible SEH programs are identified using CIP codes. For a complete list of GSS-eligible CIP codes and the associated SEH fields, see https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf24319/table/A-16. For reporting, CIP codes are aggregated into GSS codes, as shown in table A-16.

3 GSS eligible institutions are defined as follows: All academic public and private nonprofit institutions in the United States and its territories that grant research-oriented master's degrees or doctorates, appoint postdocs, or employ doctorate-holding nonfaculty researchers in science, engineering, and health-related fields (NCSES, 2016).

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2016. Assessing the Impact of Frame Changes on Trend Data from the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering. Special Report NSF 16-314. Arlington, VA: U.S. National Science Foundation. Available at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16314/#chp7.

4 GSS respondents, who respond on behalf of their schools, are called coordinators. Schools may have separate coordinators for reporting graduate students and postdocs or nonfaculty researchers (NFRs). Institutions may be split into multiple schools.

5 In 2017, the fields of architecture, communications, and public administration and portions of the field of nutrition and the field of family and consumer and human sciences became ineligible. This change led to an eligibility review for institutions that reported those fields.

6 A small number of institutions offer GSS-eligible SEH programs jointly with another GSS institution and have their students reported by the partner institutions; thus, they report only postdoctorate appointees or doctorate-holding nonfaculty researchers to the GSS. These institutions were out of the scope of this review

7 As a census, in the GSS, any percent change between -1 and 1 is considered stable since the magnitude is small.

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). 2025. Impact of the 2024 GSS Institutional Eligibility Review on Counts of GSS Master's Students. NSF 25-346. Alexandria, VA: U.S. National Science Foundation. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf25346.