Dear Commons Community,

The job market for those with doctoral degrees remains weak.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“People awarded doctoral degrees at American universities last year continued to face less-certain futures than those who earned such degrees before the economy took a nosedive in late 2008, according to new federal survey data.

The survey of 2015 doctorate recipients found that 38 percent of those responding to a question about their future plans reported having no definite commitment for employment or postdoctoral study. While a slight improvement over the previous year, when 38.6 percent of respondents said they had no such commitments, that figure remains substantially higher than it was before the Great Recession. In 2008, before the nation’s economic woes began to be widely felt, fewer than 31 percent reported having no job or postsecondary study lined up.

Despite the weak job market, the number of doctorates awarded by American institutions rose for the fifth straight year, reaching an all-time high of more than 55,000. Among the fields with the fastest growth were political science, sociology, and education. The share of 2015 doctorate recipients who were U.S. citizens or permanent residents stood at about 64 percent, nearly a percentage point higher than the year before.

The data come from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, an annual census sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

The National Center for Education Statistics maintains a website with a plethora of data going back several decades on doctoral graduates. 

Tony