Importance of Participation

Importance of participation

A high response rate among institutions and graduates is essential to the statistical integrity of the data. High-quality data ensure that analyses and policy decisions are based on all research doctorate recipients. Further, participation in the SED ensures your institution’s doctorate recipients are represented in the Doctorate Records File, a data bank on U.S. doctorate recipients reaching back to 1920.

Data from the SED can be used by institutions to compare their graduates with national statistics. Using recent data, researchers have learned:

  1. Data from academic year 2022 (1 July 2021 through 30 June 2022) report the highest number of research doctoral conferrals ever in a single academic year: 57,596.
  2. Delays in graduation and other disruptions to the completion of doctoral requirements contributed to this increase, with more than half of the 2022 doctorate recipients (54.0% of women, 53.1% of men) reporting the pandemic had delayed the timeline for completing their doctoral degree.
  3. Between 2021 and 2022 the proportion of doctorate recipients with commitments for employment in the academic sector declined by 3.7 percentage points, while the proportion taking positions in the private sector increased by 4.4 percentage points.
Benefits of participation

The results of this annual survey provide an objective basis for policy decisions that aim to improve our system of doctoral education. Maintaining a high response rate is essential to the statistical integrity of the SED data and, thus, to the legitimacy of the policy decisions that rely on these data. Consequently, the SED project team works closely with each Graduate School Dean and their staff to help them distribute and collect the SED in ways that facilitate student cooperation without creating undue burden.

In addition to contributing to an accurate and complete data resource, participation in the SED gains your institution access to an institution profile (containing summary information) and an institution dataset.