“The states are in financial stress,” said Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. “The school systems especially are in financial stress. Teachers are no longer being provided time off to get graduate degrees, and schools are no longer funding principals to go back and get principal certificates.”

美国研究生院委员会主席黛博拉·斯图尔特(Debra Stewart)指出：“各州均面临财政压力。教育系统的财务压力更大。教师再也没有休假深造的机会，学校也不再资助中小学校长回到校园里去拿资格证书。”

The next sharpest decline was in programs for arts and humanities, where new graduate enrollment fell by 5.4 percent, perhaps reflecting that career prospects for such graduates are becoming more limited as colleges lay off even tenured faculty members in these areas.

 艺术和人文学科入学人数减少了5.4%，跌幅仅次于教育专业，原因可能是此类研究生毕业后的就业空间越来越小。同时，高校正在裁减艺术和人文课程教师，连终身聘任的教师也不例外。

Health sciences, on the other hand, experienced a big increase in enrollment. The health care industry has been hiring consistently and robustly during the recession and the weak recovery.

而另一方面，健康科学类研究生入学人数出现大幅增长。在经济衰退和缓慢复苏阶段，医疗保健行业一直在大量创造就业机会。

The number of new graduate students studying health care rose by 6.4 percent, which was slightly slower growth than the average in the last decade. The average annual change in new graduate enrollment in health sciences from 2001 to 2011 was 9.8 percent.

医疗保健专业研究生的入学人数上升了6.4%，稍低于过去10年的平均增长率。从2001年到2011年，健康科学类研究生入学人数的年均增幅为9.8%。

Enrollment showed more tepid growth in business, which was up by 2.6 percent, and in mathematics and computer sciences, up by 1.6 percent.

商科以及数学和计算机科学研究生入学人数增长较慢，分别为2.6%和1.6%。

While overall enrollment for graduate school declined, the number of applications rose by 4.3 percent. It was the sixth consecutive increase in application volume.

虽然研究生总入学人数下降，但申请人数上升了4.3%。这是研究生申请人数连续第六年出现增长。

The Council of Graduate Schools did not have data on how many schools the typical applicant applies to, so it was unclear if there were more people applying in 2011 than in the previous year. But there was an increase in the number of people taking the Graduate Record Examinations (G.R.E.), a test that many graduate schools require as part of student applications.

美国研究生院委员会没有相关数据得知本科毕业生通常会申请几所高校的研究生课程，因此无法确定2011年的申请人数是否多于2010年。但参加美国研究生入学考试(GRE)的人数确实出现了增长。在美国，许多研究生课程都要求申请者参加这项考试。

As the number of grad school applications has risen, the share of those applications leading to offers of admission has been falling. In 2007, the acceptance rate across all master’s and doctoral programs was 44.6 percent, whereas in 2011 it was 40.8 percent.

 随着申请人数增多，申请者的入学比例不断下降。2007年美国所有硕士和博士课程的申请通过率为44.6%，到2011年该数字降至40.8%。

Women continued to outnumber men in the nation’s postgraduate programs, 58 percent to 42 percent, in the 2011 report.

在美国，女性读研人数仍超过男性。美国研究生院委员会2011年报告提供的男女研究生比例为42%比58%。

The Council of Graduate Schools, a membership organization for institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada, based its findings on an annual survey of American graduate schools. The latest report reflected the responses from 655 institutions, which collectively award 81 percent of the master’s degrees and 92 percent of the doctorates each year.

美国研究生院委员会是面向美国和加拿大高校的会员制组织，它撰写报告的依据是对美、加研究生院的年度调查。该委员会的最新报告囊括了对655所高校的调查结果，这些高校每年颁发的硕士和博士文凭分别占美、加两国所颁文凭总数的81%和92%。