Figure

II-21d: Distribution of Doctoral Degree Completions among Academic Fields, 1987–2018

* Excluding professional practice doctorates (MD, DVM, etc.). The appearance of a dramatic shrinkage in 2010 in the share of all doctorates that went to students in the health and medical sciences is attributable to a change made by the National Center for Education Statistics in the way it asks institutions to classify doctorates. Please see the “About the Data” information associated with this indicator for details. (See also the Note on the Definition of Advanced Degrees for a description of this shift and the steps the Humanities Indicators has taken to help ensure comparability of the advanced degree counts it provides for different years.)

Source: Office of Education/U.S. Department of Education, Survey of Earned Degrees, Higher Education General Information System, and Integrated Postsecondary Data System. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

See the Note on the Data Used to Calculate Humanities Degree Counts and Shares and the Note on the Definition of Advanced Degrees.

Through 2009, many advanced degrees in the health sciences were classified by awarding institutions not as “first professional” degrees (the way in which the National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] requires M.D.’s be classified) but as doctorates. With the elimination by NCES of the generic doctoral degree category in 2010, institutions began classifying such degrees as “professional practice” doctoral degrees, which the Humanities Indicators includes in its master’s degree and professional degree counts. This change in the classification of health sciences doctorates, in combination with the relatively small number of doctoral degrees completed each year, creates the false impression that the health and medical sciences field experienced a profound loss of doctorate “market share.”

Back to Humanities Indicators