RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia colleges awarded the highest number of bachelor's degrees in state history last year.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports research released Friday by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia shows that students earned a total of 54,508 bachelor's degrees in the 2016-2017 school year, with the majority — at nearly 38,000— conferred by the state's public colleges.

The three most popular majors at public colleges were psychology, biology and business administration, unchanged from the previous year. The state also set a record for the conferral of science, technology, engineering, math and health degrees, at 24,405.

More than 31,000 of the degrees were obtained by in-state students.

The combined number of undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees and certificates did see a drop of around 1,000 from 2016's record of 119,934.

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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.richmond.com

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