This report summarizes trends in U.S. doctoral education by using data from the 2023 Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census of research doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. Important trends in this population are highlighted in this report, including the representation of women, minorities, and temporary visa holders; fields that are attracting graduate students; employment opportunities after graduation; and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctorate recipients. Detailed data tables and other resources are also available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2023.

These tables release data from the 2023 Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), an annual census of research doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. The tables include long-term trend data on doctorate recipients by field; educational pathways to the doctorate and sources of financial support; postgraduation employment plans; and representation of women, minorities, and temporary visa holders among doctorate recipients. Data also will be available in an interactive data tool (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/builder/sed) and the Restricted Data Analysis System (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/rdas/). The SED is sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the U.S. National Science Foundation and by three other federal agencies: the National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and National Endowment for the Humanities.

This report summarizes trends in U.S. doctoral education by using data from the 2022 Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census of research doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. Important trends in this population are highlighted in this report, including the representation of women, minorities, and temporary visa holders; fields that are attracting graduate students; time to complete doctoral degree; employment opportunities after graduation; and educational pathways to the doctorate. A special section focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctorate recipients’ graduate experiences and postgraduation plans. Detailed data tables and additional resources are also available.

New data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) show an increase in doctoral degree awards for the 2022 academic year and the highest number of research doctorates ever conferred in a single academic year. This was preceded by declines in doctorate conferrals from spring 2020 through spring 2021 after the shutdown of most colleges and universities at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. A higher proportion of recent doctorate recipients reported definite postgraduation employment commitments than in prior years. The data also show a long-term decline of postgraduation employment commitments within the academic sector and an increase in employment commitments in the business sector. These data are from the 2022 SED, conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation and cosponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This report summarizes trends in U.S. doctoral education by using data from the 2021 Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census of research doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. Important trends in this population are highlighted in this report, including the representation of women, minorities, and temporary visa holders; fields that are attracting graduate students; time to complete doctoral degree; employment opportunities after graduation; and educational pathways to the doctorate. A special section focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctorate recipients’ graduate experiences and postgraduation plans. Detailed data tables and additional resources are also available.

This working paper describes the motivation for changing the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) field of study (FOS) taxonomy used for collection and reporting of education data items in the 2021 SED, and the improvements to education data items. The paper also examines the impact of these changes on the distribution of historical FOS data and provides guidance on conducting trend data comparisons.

Developing linkages between administrative data and National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) survey data provides new opportunities to examine the impacts of federal funding on the U.S. science and engineering enterprise. This working paper describes a novel effort to match respondents of the NCSES Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) to investigators in the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards database. Specific inputs to the matching process included data from the 2015 SDR—which consisted of 78,320 respondents, representing 920,050 U.S.-residing and 127,800 non-U.S.-residing doctoral scientists and engineers—and roughly 700,000 NSF award-investigator records spanning the last 60 years. Matching was performed sequentially using deterministic methods, primarily relying on survey respondent and award investigator names and e-mail addresses, as well as institution information. The matching process resulted in 7,363 SDR respondents matched to NSF awards, with an average of 4.4 awards matched to each individual who was matched to any award. Data limitations of this matched set, as well as illustrative use examples, are discussed. This proof-of-concept exploration indicates the potential of data linkages to improve the utility of NCSES survey data and to open a wide range of applications for research and program evaluation.

This InfoBrief examines the baccalaureate origins of doctorate recipients from 2010–20 by citizenship status, race, and ethnicity. Black, Hispanic, and AIAN doctorate recipients from 2010–20 disproportionately earned a bachelor’s degree from minority serving institutions, underscoring the importance of these colleges and universities for enhancing the diversity of the U.S. research enterprise. Although most Black and Hispanic doctorate recipients earned a bachelor’s degree from public colleges and universities, a higher proportion of Black and Hispanic students with undergraduate degrees from private colleges and universities went on to earn a research doctorate. Data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics’ Survey of Earned Doctorates were used to report the numbers of research doctorate recipients between 2010 and 2020, as well as their baccalaureate-origin institutions. Data from the Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Completions Survey provide the numbers of bachelor's degrees awarded between 2001 and 2011.

The Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation, provides demographic, education, and career history information from individuals with a U.S. research doctoral degree in a science, engineering, or health (SEH) field. This report contains technical documentation for the longitudinal subsample of the 2015 SDR (the LSDR 2015–25 panel), which is designed to provide information about employment changes among the population of U.S.-trained science, engineering, and health (SEH) doctorate holders less than 65 years of age in 2015 over a 10-year period (2015–25). The first release of data from the LSDR 2015–25 panel includes survey data from three cycles of the SDR: 2015, 2017, and 2019.

Baccalaureate education can play a significant role in influencing the higher education of research doctorate recipients. Despite most doctoral students per capita in the United States earning research doctorates from institutions in the Carnegie Classification group R1: doctoral universities or foreign institutions, more graduates from Carnegie class of baccalaureate colleges: arts and sciences focus than their peers at other Carnegie class of institutions earn a doctoral degree in science and engineering (S&E). Using institutional-yield ratio and doctoral-yield ratio, this InfoBrief examines the top baccalaureate-origin institutions of research doctorate recipients in S&E and non-S&E fields over the past decade.