^This. The people who finished in 2015 likely started their PhDs between 2008 and 2010, at the beginning through the height of the Great Recession. I finished in 2014 after beginning in 2008, and although I didn’t start graduate school because of the recession - the brunt of it hit actually a few months after I had already committed, and long after I’d already made my decision - I do remember being very glad that I’d decided to go to grad school.
I wonder whether a one percentage point change in the percent of PhD graduates who were U.S. citizens or nationals is actually a significant difference, statistically? It certainly isn’t a meaningful one.
Also interesting is how many had committed to jobs post-degree, and how that was less different by field than you’d expect. Fully 30% of math and computer science PhDs did not have postgraduate plans yet, which is far higher than I would’ve expected. In fact, the number of psychologists and social scientists with postgraduate plans already set is functionally pretty much the same for math & computer science doctorates and 10 percentage points more than the engineering PhD recipients. (Although maybe the engineers just have so many good competing offers that they simply don’t know what to do with themselves? Lol.)
Michigan is really good at attracting African American PhD students. They have all kinds of events for black PhD students and a pretty active black graduate student network there. Have to say, though, it’s kind of sad that Walden U tops that list.