American universities awarded 54,070 research doctorates in 2014, the highest total in the 58 years that the National Science Foundation has sponsored the Survey of Earned Doctorates, a new edition of which was released Friday.
But while more doctorates are being awarded, the figures also point to transitions and concerns in graduate education.
Increasingly, the pool of doctoral degrees coming out of American universities is dominated by science and engineering Ph.D.s. Their numbers were up 2 percent in 2014, compared to the prior year, while all other research doctorates were down by 2 percent. With those changes, science and engineering Ph.D.s make up 75 percent of all doctorates awarded in 2014.
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