Which fields of study award the most doctoral degrees in the United States in 2024?
This project identifies the fields of study that were awarded the highest amount of doctoral degrees in the united states, during 2024. Understanding which fields produce the highest number of doctoral degrees can help show the areas where advanced research occurs, and where long term education is the most effective / dominant. Doctoral degrees represent long term funding, education, and development across the respective field.
The data set used in this project is the “Survery Of Earned Doctorates 2024”, Table 3-1, published by the National Science foundation (NCS) through the National Center for Science and Engineering Sciences (NCSES). The variables in the project is the total number of doctorate degrees awarded among each field. This project uses values from 2024 to create it’s data.
library(readxl)
data <- read_excel("proj1data/nsf25349-tab003-001.xlsx")## New names:
## • `` -> `...2`
## • `` -> `...3`
## • `` -> `...4`
## • `` -> `...5`library(dplyr)##
## Attaching package: 'dplyr'
##
## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
##
## filter, lag
##
## The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
##
## intersect, setdiff, setequal, unionclean_data <- data %>%
filter(`Table 3-1` != "Research doctorate recipients, by detailed field of doctorate: 2021–24",
`Table 3-1` != "(Number)",
`Table 3-1` != "Field of doctorate")
head(clean_data)## # A tibble: 6 × 5
## `Table 3-1` ...2 ...3 ...4 ...5
## <chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 All fields 52159.0 57439 57806 58131
## 2 Science and engineering 41187.0 45838 45933 46394
## 3 Agricultural sciences and natural resources 1222.0 1304 1278 1309
## 4 Agricultural, animal, plant, and veterinary sciences 806.0 857 856 866
## 5 Agronomy and crop science 69.0 68 76 71
## 6 Animal sciences 159.0 174 173 198colnames(clean_data)## [1] "Table 3-1" "...2" "...3" "...4" "...5"## # A tibble: 396 × 2
## field doctorates_2024
## <chr> <dbl>
## 1 All fields 58131
## 2 Science and engineering 46394
## 3 Non-science and engineering 11737
## 4 Engineering 10544
## 5 Biological and biomedical sciences 9797
## 6 Physical sciences 5367
## 7 Social sciences 5126
## 8 Psychology 3951
## 9 Education 3941
## 10 Humanities 3305
## # ℹ 386 more rowsTo solve the research question I first imported the dataset from an Excel file into R’s directory. The spreadsheet contained a lot of unecessary information and was messy, so we cleaned it using the filter() function, to limit our data down to the fields and the number of degrees. Next, using the arrange() command I sorted the degrees in order from most recipients to least. Finally using the summary table we can come to the conclusion that Engineering, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, and Physical Sciences are all the top.
Ultimately, this analysis answered the question, finding that Engineering was the top with 10,544 recipients. Biological and Biomedical sciences follows closesly behind with 9,797 recipients. With engineering and biomedical at the top of the rung, and physical and social sciences leading close behind, it’s safe to say that STEM related fields have the most doctorate degree recipients. There is likely correlation between the amount of technical - stem / science related degrees being awarded, and the advancing AI technology. AI’s influence on the job market is likely to be unprecedented, already taking over fields like Programming, and stated to soon have influence on jobs related to literature, writing, and likely soon others, the importance in an extremely technical science degree like engineering or biology is unmatched for the purposes of job security. One other thing that could be added and continue to advance the study is also reasearching jobs with the most likely job security, to find out if the earlier hypothesis has merit.
National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Survey of Earned Doctorates 2024, Table 3-1: Research doctorate recipients, by detailed field of doctorate: 2021–24.