The Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and by three other federal agencies: the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Monitoring the number of degrees awarded in science and engineering fields is an important part of the mission of NCSES, and the data from the SED are reported in several publications. The most comprehensive and widely cited publication is this report, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities. This annual report calls attention to major trends in doctoral education and is organized into four recurring themes and a special focus area that highlight important questions about doctorate recipients. Online, the reader is invited to explore trends in greater depth through detailed data tables and interactive graphics (https://ncses.nsf.gov/sed/). Technical notes and related resources are provided to aid in interpreting the data, and report content is available for downloading. An interactive data tool with data from the SED and other NCSES surveys is also available at https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/ids/sed.