African Americans remain under-represented among those earning a bachelor's degree in engineering, according to a study carried out by the American Institute of Physics.

Despite a 10% increase in the overall number of African Americans attaining bachelor's degrees in engineering in 2013 compared to 2003, their numbers have increased at a slower rate than for all engineering graduates, which rose 29% over the same period.

African Americans earned 5,074 engineering degrees in 2013. That was 5% of the 100,500 degrees awarded that year. A decade earlier, African Americans earned roughly 6% of all engineering degrees.

Image credit: AIP.The study provides data on nine disciplines within the field of engineering. Degrees awarded to African Americans rose at a faster rate than the overall rate in two of the nine disciplines: civil engineering (up 84% vs. 69% overall) and engineering technologies (up 7% vs. 4% overall).

In two other disciplines, the numbers of African Americans showed outright declines in 2013 compared to 2003: electrical and industrial engineering. Both were down 15%.

The numbers for engineering stand in contrast to the overall trends for African Americans seeking bachelor's degrees. They show a 41% jump from 2003 to 2013, eclipsing the growth rate for all bachelor’s degree recipients, at 31%.