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Research Outline

Prepared for Peter W. | Delivered October 8, 2019

Global PhDs

Goals

Provide an estimate of how many PhD's and adjunct professors there are in the world in order to determine supply of smart people who would be interested in working for a knowledge marketplace

Early Findings

The top producers of PhD students globally are the US (67,449 graduates per year on average), Germany (28,147 graduates per year), the UK (25,020 graduates per year) , and India (24,300 graduates per year).

Last year, the US however had higher than usual PhD graduates, with 78,778 total doctoral degrees awarded.

However, between 2016 to 2017 there had been a very slight decline in PhD graduates in the US, so growth does not appear to be consistent.

While there was no figure on total PhDs globally, a report shows that number of doctoral degrees globally has increased significantly over the past 20 years, and that majority of these graduates are from OECD countries.
It's noted that approximately 40% of PhDs globally are in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The number of total existing doctoral degree holders in the US has more than doubled to just over 4.5 million since 2000.

While it was not broken down by degree level, the total number of students globally in higher education is projected to reach 380 million by 2020. In 2016, there were only 216 million students in higher education worldwide.

 Another study projected dramatic growth globally in higher education, with as many as 600 million students enrolled in universities by 2040.