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Doctoral education trains scientists, engineers, researchers, and scholars, all of whom are critical to the nation’s progress. These individuals discover, create, and share new knowledge and new ways of thinking that lead, directly and indirectly, to new products, services, and works of art. Annual counts of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities are measures of the incremental investment in human resources devoted to science, engineering, research, and scholarship, and these counts can serve as leading indicators of the capacity for knowledge creation and innovation in various domains.
Changes in the characteristics of doctorate recipients over time reflect political, economic, social, technological, and demographic trends. These include the following:
Changes in doctorate recipient demographics
Changes in the number of doctorates awarded in specific science and engineering (S&E) fields
Shifting academic employment opportunities after graduation
Trends in the pursuit of postdoctoral (postdoc) research positions by field
Understanding these trends and changes is necessary to inform policy discussions regarding this country’s doctoral education system.
The data in this report cover the 2024 academic year (1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024) and were collected from doctoral students who completed the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) as they approached graduation.
Key takeaways from the 2024 SED data include the following:
The number of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities increased from 57,806 in 2023 to 58,131 in 2024.
In the past 2 decades, the number of doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders increased by 76% in S&E fields and by 24% in non-S&E fields, compared with a 61% increase in S&E and a 20% decline in non-S&E doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
Between 2023 and 2024, the proportion of doctorate recipients with definite employment commitments declined in all S&E broad fields. The largest declines were in physical sciences and mathematics and statistics (6 percentage points each); in biological and biomedical sciences (5 percentage points); and in agricultural sciences and natural resources, health sciences, and engineering (4 percentage points each).
In the past 20 years, the proportion of non-postdoc U.S. employment commitments in academia declined in all S&E fields, while the proportion of those in industry or business increased. Despite this long-term trend, between 2023 and 2024 the proportion of non-postdoc commitments in academia increased in all S&E fields except psychology. In industry or business, the proportion of these commitments declined in all S&E fields since at least 2022.
Between 2023 and 2024, the proportion of definite commitments for postdoc positions increased in most S&E fields. The largest increases, between 6 and 8 percentage points, were in physical sciences, biological and biomedical sciences, and computer and information sciences.
1Data on doctorate recipients for previous years are updated with data received from institutions and respondents after the close of data collection for a given year. Updates and corrections to graduation dates can also change the overall counts for prior years. The published tables reflect these changes and thus may not match previously published data.
2In 2021, the method for classifying fields of study changed to using the National Center for Education Statistics 2020 revision to the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). This SED-CIP method is aligned with the Taxonomy of Disciplines from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) to facilitate comparisons with other NCSES surveys as well as with the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Completions survey. A new trend taxonomy was developed to be able to crosswalk and compare data following the 2021 SED-CIP reclassification with data collected prior to 2021. All figures and tables in this publication are based on the trend taxonomy. This leads to slight differences in counts between individual year SED-CIP data from 2021 onward and multiyear data using the trend taxonomy crosswalk. See the “Data source” section for more details.
3The calculation of these proportions excluded doctorate recipients who did not report citizenship.
4For additional data on the race and ethnicity of doctorate recipients, see SED 2024 related detailed table 1-11. Race categories exclude Hispanic origin; Hispanic may be any race.
5In 2004, there were 16,921 S&E U.S. citizen and permanent resident doctorate recipients; in 2024, there were 27,204. (See figure 2.)
6The proportion of doctorate recipients by trend broad field out of all doctorate recipients (S&E and non-S&E) can be derived using data from figure 1 for the total number of doctorate recipients and figure 7 and figure 8 for the number of doctorate recipients by field.
7Beginning in 2021, field of doctorate data are collected using a modified version of the 2020 CIP codes and reported using a new SED-specific taxonomy (table A-4). For more details on data comparability, see the 2024 “Technical Notes” and the SED 2021 Taxonomy Changes Working Paper.
8Other non-S&E fields include fields such as communications and journalism, public administration and social services, and multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary studies. Some of the overall increase in the other non-S&E fields category after 2021 may be due to the changes in the SED taxonomy in 2021 (see “Data source” section for details).
9The drop in the number of doctorate recipients in the field of education between 2009 and 2011 is at least partly attributable to the reclassification of Doctor of Education (EdD) programs. For details, see “Time series data changes” in the “Data source” section.
10The data in this section are based on the trend broad fields, that is, the set of broad fields used for trend data across all years that offer data that are generally comparable across years. However, the increase in the number of doctorate recipients in non-S&E fields between 2021 and 2024 can also be observed when comparing the data on non-S&E fields using the SED-CIP taxonomy implemented since the 2021 SED.
11For additional data by citizenship status of doctorate recipients, see SED 2024 related detailed table 1-6.
12In non-S&E fields, the proportion of temporary visa holders increased the most in business, from 42% in 2004 to 50% in 2024. See detailed table 1-6.
13For additional details by field, see SED 2024 related detailed table 1-11.
14For additional data on the fields of education, humanities and arts, and other non-S&E fields, see SED 2024 related detailed table 1-4.
15For time trend data on the number of doctorate recipients by field and sex, see SED 2024 related detailed table 1-4.
16For data on doctorate recipients with definite postgraduation commitments for employment or postdoctoral training, see SED 2024 related detailed table 2-1.
19Special tabulation from the 2024 Survey of Earned Doctorates. In 2024, 33,765 of the 58,131 doctorate recipients had definite employment or postdoctoral training commitments in the United States; 15,182 of those reporting their postgraduation location as the United States either did not have definite commitments or did not report their status. Of the 33,765 who reported definite employment or postdoctoral training, 20,469 (61%) had definite commitments in employment, and 13,296 (39%) in postdoc positions. See SED 2024 related detailed table 2-6.
20For data on doctorate recipients with definite postgraduation employment commitments in academia, see SED 2024 related detailed table 2-6. Academia includes 4-year colleges or universities; medical schools; university-affiliated research institutes; community or 2-year colleges; and foreign educational institutions.
21In 2004, 256 of 350 doctorate recipients in mathematics and statistics had non-postdoc academic employment commitments, compared to 260 out of 675 doctorate recipients in 2024. In 2004, 206 out of 391 doctorate recipients in computer and information sciences had non-postdoc academic employment commitments, compared to 378 out of 1,372 doctorate recipients in 2024. These counts are the underlying numbers used to calculate the percentages in related detailed table 2-6.
22For data on doctorate recipients with definite postgraduation employment commitments in industry or business, see related detailed table 2-6.
23For a discussion on recent trends in employment commitment, see NCSES. 2023. Research Doctorate Conferrals Rebound, Leading to Record Number of U.S. Doctorate Recipients in 2022. NSF 23-353. Alexandria, VA: U.S. National Science Foundation. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23353.
24Postdoc commitments or postdoc rates are the percentage of doctorate recipients with commitments to postdoc or other training positions in any sector. Employment rates in academia and industry or business are based on the number of doctorate recipients with commitments to non-postdoc employment. As a result, commitments in postdoc, academia, and industry positions do not sum to 100.
25Special tabulation from the 2024 SED. In 2004, 4,354 of the 5,840 S&E temporary visa holder doctorate recipients reported that the location of their postdoc or employment position was in the United States. In 2024, 9,681 of the 11,438 S&E doctorate recipients did.
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