The Role of Physics in the Landscape of Quantum Information Science Education

Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) is of growing interest among several disciplines. Although there is ongoing work in the characterization of the content and availability of introductory quantum and QISE courses, there is no holistic picture of quantum education in the United States. This work is part of an effort to characterize the current landscape of quantum-related courses and QISE degree programs in higher education. Course and program names, or course descriptions containing the word "quantum" were identified and recorded via manual web scraping. The sample consists of 1456 institutions including 438 community colleges, 217 4-Year institutions, all R1 and R2 institutions, and 688 MSIs. Over 8000 courses have been recorded and 68 QISE specific programs have been identified. These data allow us to examine the extent to which quantum is being addressed in different academic disciplines, the various types of physics courses that include quantum concepts, and how the presence of quantum and QISE coursework varies among types of institutions and geographical locations. This talk presents some characterization of the courses across all disciplines before focusing on the subset of ~4700 recorded physics. ​​​​