Academic conference participation ranges from professional engagement among U.S. college graduates to tens of thousands of attendees at a major scientific meeting. The figures below show how participation changed by survey year, meeting format, career stage, geography, registration type, and paper acceptance. Dates and populations are kept explicit because these measures describe different kinds of participation.
Contents
- Professional conference participation among U.S. college graduates
- AGU Fall Meeting attendance and format
- Who participated in AGU meetings
- Students, first-time attendees, and access support
- Online and in-person participation at AGU
- ACM registration patterns
- ACM TEI attendance and paper acceptance
Professional conference participation among U.S. college graduates
The National Survey of College Graduates measured whether U.S. college graduates had attended a professional conference in person or virtually during the prior 12 months. The published figures cover survey years before and during the COVID-19 period, and the 2021 measure explicitly includes both virtual and in-person attendance.
In 2015, 31.4% of U.S. college graduates reported attending a professional conference during the prior 12 months. The comparable figure was 30.4% in 2017 and 29.2% in 2019. In the 2021 survey, 23.2% reported conference attendance, with the response measure capturing virtual attendance as well as in-person attendance. These are survey-year participation measures, not counts of registrations at a particular event. Source: National Survey of College Graduates, NCSES, published in “Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Employment, Earnings, and Professional Engagement: New Insights from the 2021 National Survey of College Graduates.”
| Survey year | U.S. college graduates attending a professional conference in the prior 12 months |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 31.4% |
| 2017 | 30.4% |
| 2019 | 29.2% |
| 2021 | 23.2% |
The sequence shows participation reported by this population declining across the listed survey years. The source describes attendance as in person or virtual, so the percentages should not be interpreted as physical venue occupancy. The 2021 result also should not be treated as a like-for-like count of people traveling to a conference: its measurement includes virtual attendance.
AGU Fall Meeting attendance and format
The AGU Fall Meeting provides a large-scale example of academic meeting participation. The AGU Fall Meeting 2023 Background and History reports 22,632 registered attendees in 2017. Attendance rose to 28,289 registered attendees in 2018 and was 27,934 in 2019.
The meeting retained a large registration base during the shift to online and hybrid formats. AGU reported more than 25,400 registered attendees for its fully virtual 2020 meeting. Its first hybrid meeting in 2021 had more than 24,000 registered attendees, and the hybrid 2022 meeting had more than 23,700 registered attendees.
| AGU Fall Meeting | Attendance measure |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 22,632 registered attendees |
| 2018 | 28,289 registered attendees |
| 2019 | 27,934 registered attendees |
| 2020 | More than 25,400 registered attendees; fully virtual |
| 2021 | More than 24,000 registered attendees; first hybrid meeting |
| 2022 | More than 23,700 registered attendees; hybrid meeting |
These AGU figures are registrations, while the National Survey of College Graduates figures are percentages of a surveyed population. They answer different planning questions: one indicates the scale of a named meeting, and the other indicates the share of U.S. college graduates reporting recent professional conference participation.
Who participated in AGU meetings
AGU’s 2021 Meetings Baseline Demographic Snapshot describes the composition of Fall Meeting 2021 attendees. Among attendees who reported gender, 60.5% identified as men, 38.9% identified as women, and 0.5% identified as nonbinary. Gender was not reported for 14.8% of attendees. Because the source separately identifies nonreporting, the categories should not be treated as a complete distribution of every attendee without qualification.
Career stage also matters when interpreting participation. Students and early-career scientists made up 67% of attendees whose career stage was known. Career stage was unknown for 10% of attendees. The measure therefore identifies a strong student and early-career presence among known career-stage responses, while also showing that not every attendee had a known career-stage classification.
The meeting’s geographic and race-or-ethnicity figures add further context. The United States accounted for 67.7% of Fall Meeting 2021 attendees. Among attendees with race or ethnicity information, 57% were white and 10% were Asian or Asian American. Race or ethnicity was unknown for 30% of attendees. These denominators are important: the gender and race-or-ethnicity measures explicitly distinguish reported information from unknown or unreported information.
Students, first-time attendees, and access support
The AGU 2021 Annual Report recorded 23,895 total attendees at Fall Meeting 2021. The meeting included 7,127 graduate students and 1,276 undergraduate students. It also recorded 7,058 first-time attendees, indicating a substantial first-visit group within the meeting’s total attendance.
Participation extended across 114 countries according to the same annual report. AGU awarded 224 student travel grants for Fall Meeting 2021. A travel grant count is an access-support output, not a total number of students, and it should not be used as a measure of all financial assistance or all student participation.
The meeting also generated a large program of presentation opportunities. Fall Meeting 2021 included 10,410 poster presentations and 7,599 oral presentations. Those counts describe presentation outputs rather than unique presenters; the supplied source does not establish how many individuals contributed to more than one presentation.
Online and in-person participation at AGU
The AGU annual report separates the 2021 total by attendance mode: 13,948 online attendees and 9,947 in-person attendees, for 23,895 total attendees. This breakdown makes the hybrid meeting’s participation structure more concrete than a single total alone.
| Fall Meeting 2021 measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Total attendees | 23,895 |
| Online attendees | 13,948 |
| In-person attendees | 9,947 |
| Graduate students | 7,127 |
| Undergraduate students | 1,276 |
| First-time attendees | 7,058 |
The online and in-person figures belong to the 2021 Fall Meeting and should not be applied to the fully virtual 2020 meeting or the hybrid 2022 meeting. Likewise, the “more than” attendance descriptions for 2020 and 2022 are not exact counts in the supplied history summary. For event planning, this distinction matters when estimating room demand, digital capacity, and support needs.
ACM registration patterns
The ACM CUI Conference Statistics page reports registrations by year and format. ACM CUI recorded 67 registrations in 2019, all in person. In 2020, it recorded 492 registrations, all virtual. The 2021 conference recorded 125 registrations, also all virtual.
The format mix changed in subsequent years. ACM CUI recorded 100 registrations in 2022, including 19 virtual and 81 in person. In 2023, it recorded 152 registrations, including 36 virtual and 116 in person. The 2024 conference recorded 101 registrations, all in person. In 2025, the conference recorded 134 registrations, including 24 virtual and 110 in person. The 2026 conference recorded 170 registrations, including 25 virtual and 145 in person.
| ACM CUI conference | Total registrations | Virtual | In person |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 67 | — | 67 |
| 2020 | 492 | 492 | — |
| 2021 | 125 | 125 | — |
| 2022 | 100 | 19 | 81 |
| 2023 | 152 | 36 | 116 |
| 2024 | 101 | — | 101 |
| 2025 | 134 | 24 | 110 |
| 2026 | 170 | 25 | 145 |
The ACM CUI series illustrates why registration totals need a format label. A total of 492 in 2020 represents an all-virtual conference, while the smaller totals in later years combine, or in 2024 consist entirely of, in-person registrations. The table preserves the reported counts without converting them into unsupported rates.
ACM TEI attendance and paper acceptance
The ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction: Past TEI Conferences page reports attendance and paper acceptance figures for selected TEI conferences. Attendance was 146 in 2020, 350 in 2021, 150 in 2023, 220 in 2024, 253 in 2025, and 326 in 2026.
TEI paper acceptance figures cover a different participation stage: submitted papers and accepted papers. TEI 2026 accepted 42 of 181 papers, with a reported paper acceptance rate of 23.2%. TEI 2025 accepted 35 of 141 papers, a 24.8% rate. TEI 2024 accepted 37 of 144 papers, a 25.7% rate. TEI 2023 accepted 20 of 89 papers, a 22.5% rate, while TEI 2022 accepted 27 of 115 papers, a 24% rate. TEI 2021 accepted 40 of 136 papers, a 29% rate.
| TEI conference | Attendees | Accepted papers / submissions | Reported acceptance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 350 | 40 / 136 | 29% |
| 2022 | Not supplied | 27 / 115 | 24% |
| 2023 | 150 | 20 / 89 | 22.5% |
| 2024 | 220 | 37 / 144 | 25.7% |
| 2025 | 253 | 35 / 141 | 24.8% |
| 2026 | 326 | 42 / 181 | 23.2% |
TEI attendance and paper acceptance are related to conference participation but are not interchangeable measures. Attendance counts people at the conference, whereas acceptance rates describe the outcome of a paper-review process. The 2022 attendance figure is not supplied in the cited set, so it is left unfilled rather than inferred from the other years.