Education and Skills

These countries have the most doctoral graduates

Cleverer by degrees ... here's where most doctoral scholars are from Image: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Alex Gray
Senior Writer, Forum Agenda
Share:
Our Impact
What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Education and Skills?
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Innovation is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:

Innovation

And tertiary education in particular, is at the heart of the innovation that we see around us. New discoveries such as MP3 and GPS technology would never have happened were it not for PhD research.

Countries are investing in their higher education systems, and more people than ever before are completing doctoral degrees. But which country has the most doctoral scholars?

The US beats the rest hands down

According to an OECD report, the US has at least twice as many PhD graduates as Germany, its nearest rival.

In 2014, 67,449 people graduated with a PhD in the US, compared with 28,147 in Germany. Next in line is the United Kingdom, which just pips India into third place with 25,020 PhD graduates. India had 24,300.

Although fifth on the list, Japan only has a quarter of the PhD graduates that the US has, with 16,039.

In sixth and seventh place, France and South Korea have 13,729 and 12,931 respectively. Spain and Italy, in eighth and ninth, have a similar number, 10,889 and 10,678 respectively.

Australia is in 10th place with 8,400.

It’s worth bearing in mind that if we looked at the numbers per head of the population, the top of table might look rather different.

Image: Statista

There are more new doctorates worldwide

OECD figures also show that the number of doctoral graduates has increased worldwide in the last two decades. The majority of graduates are from OECD countries.

 Image 2
Image: OECD

Large emerging economies have expanded their higher education training capacities, says the report, as shown by India’s high position with 24,300 doctoral graduates.

Certain scientific fields are more popular among PhD scholars. About 40% of new doctorates awarded in the OECD area are in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and this percentage increases to 58% of all new graduates if doctorates in health are included. Doctoral programmes are particularly oriented towards natural sciences and engineering in France (59%) Canada (55%) and China (55%), according to the report.

Among other trends noted in the report were the increasing digitalization and internationalization of research, ushering in an era of a global knowledge economy.

Have you read?
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Share:
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

3:12

EDISON Alliance: 1 Billion Lives Connected

Carlos Sanvee

September 6, 2024

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum