In the United States, about six out of ten students in graduate schools are women. The same is true of today’s young adults who already have a degree beyond college. As a result, the Census Bureau expects that more women than men will hold professions such as doctors, lawyers and professors. Men had faster growth rates than women in going to graduate school in two thousand nine. Still, women earned sixty percent of the master’s degrees. That was the level of about ninety percent of all the graduate degrees awarded. But a new report says the two thousand eight-two thousand nine academic year marked a change. Women also earned fifty and four-tenths percent of the doctorate degrees. The Council of Graduate Schools says this was the first year ever that women earned more doctorates than men. The largest share of all doctorates that year, forty-two percent, were in education, engineering, and biological and agricultural sciences. But the report says between nineteen ninety-nine and two thousand nine, graduate enrollment increased in all subject areas. The fastest growth was in health sciences, business and engineering. In two thousand nine, graduate schools reported strong growth of six percent in first-time students from the United States. But enrollment of new international students decreased by about two percent — the first drop since two thousand four. The share of foreign new students in graduate schools fell from eighteen percent to sixteen and a half percent.In other news, President Obama marked the new school year in September with a speech from a school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President Obama told students they need to work hard in school “because an education has never been more important than it is today.” He said: “The farther you go in school, the farther you’re going to go in life.” He also said this is a time when other countries are competing with us like never before. He said students around the world in Beijing, China, or Bangalore, India, are working harder than ever, and doing better than ever. The president told the students: “Your success in school is not just going to determine your success, it’s going to determine America’s success in the twenty-first century.” For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal. You can find our programs at voaspecialenglish.com and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes at VOA Learning English.