In this edition of Useful Stats, SSTI examines Survey of Earned Doctorates data to explore the most common research doctorate fields, the time it takes to earn a doctorate, and the percentage of employment postgraduation.
The Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) is an annual census of all individuals receiving a research doctorate from an accredited U.S. institution in a given academic year. Note that professional doctoral degrees (e.g., MD, JD, DPharm, PsyD) are not included in the survey. Refer to the SED methodology page for notes and cautions on the data.
Using SED data alongside Survey of Doctorate Recipient (SDR) data, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) also released Directorate Profiles, which each include useful visualizations on research doctorate recipients for S&E fields (e.g., biological sciences and engineering).
How has the time to earn a research doctorate changed since the 1970s?
Across all fields, the median time to earn a research doctorate in 2025 was 8.6 years after earning a bachelor's degree, 7.0 years after starting graduate school, and 5.8 years after starting the doctoral program.1
If one looks at only S&E fields, the median timeline modestly shortens. In 2025, the median time to earn an S&E research doctorate was 8.0 years after earning a bachelor's degree, 6.8 years after starting graduate school, and 5.7 years after starting the doctoral program. In contrast, non-S&E research doctorates generally took longer, at 12.7, 10.0, and 5.9 years, respectively.
Compared with the earliest available data (academic year 1975) the time to research doctorate is similar; across all fields from 1975 to 2025, the time since earning a bachelor's degree decreased by 0.1 years (about 6 weeks) while the time since starting graduate school dropped by half a year. (Note: Data for median years since starting the doctoral program are only available since 2015.)
Although the timeline is fairly similar in both 1975 and 2025, the trends have not been completely flat: in the available years between 1985 and 2000, the median time to a research doctorate across all fields since earning a bachelor's degree was over 10 years, peaking at 10.9 years in 1995.
Figure 1 below includes an interactive graphic with the above data and more. The metric shown (time since X) can be toggled by clicking on any of the options beneath the title. Clicking on any colored year will exclude it from all of the column charts.
Figure 1: Median years to research doctorate by broad field
It is important to remember that each of these categories represents larger groups of more specific fields and degrees. A key example is a research doctorate in education; education degrees take substantially longer than degrees in almost all other fields, according to the SEDs data. In 2025, the median time to earn a research doctorate in education was 15.5 years, and the median time since starting graduate school was 12. However, looking at just the time since starting the doctoral program, the median was much lower at 5.4 years—shorter than the all-fields, S&E, and non-S&E medians.
Can research doctorates secure employment or postdoctoral training after graduation?
The percentage of research doctorate recipients with definite commitments2 postgraduation remained relatively stable since 1995 across the three categories of all fields, S&E, and non-S&E. In all three categories, the commitment rates hit their lowest recorded levels in 2015 (around 62%) before rebounding. Figure 2 below includes grouped column charts for each of the three categories and all available data years to show trends over time.
Figure 2: Postgraduation definite commitment for employment or postdoctoral training (%), by broad field of doctorate, selected years, 1995–2025
These trends vary by field and specific degree, with some having a much higher or lower percentage of postgraduate commitment. Figure 3 includes a set of column charts for each doctoral field available in the data, set across all available years of data from 1995 through 2025, and separated by broad S&E or non-S&E categories.
In academic year 2025, business had the field with the largest percentage of definite commitments for employment or postdoctoral training at approximately 81%, followed by psychology, computer and information sciences, and education at approximately 77%, 74%, 73%, and 72%, respectively.
At the other end of the spectrum, biological and biomedical sciences had the lowest percentage of those with definite commitments for employment or postdoctoral training postgraduation at approximately 59%. Humanities and arts, physical sciences, and engineering fair just above at approximately 62%, 63%, and 66% respectively.
Figure 3: Postgraduation definite commitment for employment or postdoctoral training (%), by field of doctorate, selected years, 1995–2025
In what fields are the most research doctorates awarded?
Figure 4 below includes a tree map with the count and distribution of research doctorate recipients by field of doctorate for 2021 through 2025. The data is separated into two main categories, science and engineering (S&E) and non-science and engineering (non-S&E).
Within the S&E category, engineering represents the single largest individual field at just over 10,800 (or 23% of S&E) research doctorates in academic year 2025, followed by biological and biomedical sciences at just shy of 10,000 (or 21% of S&E). For the non-S&E category, education accounts for the largest area at approximately 4,050 (or 34% of non-S&E), followed by humanities at approximately 3,350 (or 29% of non-S&E). Refer to Figure 4 for trends over time.
Figure 4: Count of research doctorate recipients by field of doctorate, 2021–2025