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CCCESD/CDDGC
Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments
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CCCESD/CDDGC
Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments
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This page reports the survey of Canadian Earth Science departments from the calendar year 2010. In total, 35 schools responded for some part of this time frame. No data were received from Laurentian or Waterloo, and for them data from the last year of reporting were carried forward. The University of Guelph indicated that it no longer offered any Geology courses and has withdrawn from CCCESD. Full details of the response rate can be found on the page listing responses.
Figure 1 shows total undergraduate and graduate student enrolment. The steady rise in undergraduate program registrations from 2003 appears to have leveled off at about 3700 students. The Geology+Geophysics subset has leveled off at about 2600 students over the past three years. Nationally, Canada has experienced an overall increase in undergraduate enrolments over the past 8 years, more than doubling the enrolments in Geology in Ontario and Western universities. Environmental Earth Science enrolments in is also stable over the past three years across Canada, and fairly even over the past 8 years except in the West where the number of students enrolled has tripled. The overall increase in enrolment from 2002-2008 is mirrored by the graduation numbers, now over 850 (Figure 3). This number should increase substantially for the next two year.
Numbers of first year and service course registrations, Figure 2, which had been level for 4 years at around 41000 before peaking at 44000 last year, has returned to the 2005-2009 levels, mainly as a result of declines in two Ontario universities and the elimination of Geology courses at Guelph.
The number of registrations for MSc graduate work (Figure 1) continues to climb, especially in the West. The total number of students enrolled in MSc programs increased by over 8% this year on top of a 10% increase last year, a trend that has been run for 5 years now. More than half of this increase is in the Environmental Earth Science area. The increase in MSc numbers is not mirrored by an increase in PhD registrations - that number has dropped slightly this year, mostly in the Environmental Earth Science area.
Figure 4 presents an analysis of the gender distributions over the past 15 years for undergraduate, masters and doctoral level graduate students and faculty cohorts. Women comprise approximately 42% of the MSc level, and 40% of BSc program registrants - these numbers have declined 3% and 5% s over the past 5 years. At the PhD level, the fraction of women continues to rise, now at 35% and in faculty positions, it is holding at 18%.
Numbers of faculty, Post-Doctoral Associates/Fellows, and support staff are shown on Figure 5
and Figure 6. Faculty numbers show a slight
decline - this is an artefact of the removal of University of Guelph from the
dataset. Guelph no longer offers geological programs; if Guelph were still
included in the data set, 2010 would set a record for the number of faculty
employed in the Earth Sciences. Faculty
numbers have climbed 20% since 2000, likely primarily the result of CRC appointments. The steady decline of support staff
from 1988 to 2000 appears to have leveled off. The ratio
of support staff to faculty has continued in the steady decade-long decline mainly as
a result of the continuing decrease in support staff in Ontario and the West. The number of post-doctoral assistants,
however, continues to rise, and is now more than double that of 10
years ago.
Regional analysis by year:
