The doctoral students
Being a doctoral student means occupying a specific position, but that does not mean that all doctoral students occupy the same kind of position. People can be doctoral students in many ways: the way they are recruited varies, as do the forms of funding, collegial relationships and roles within their subject or field of research.
The group of doctoral students is also affected by the same kind of intersectional power structures as others in society. But one thing can be said about what all doctoral student positions have in common – it is a precarious employment situation. On the one hand, doctoral students are postgraduate students; on the other, they must have their funding secured for all four years in order to be admitted to the doctoral programme, which means that many are simultaneously employed, but always on fixed-term contracts.
Despite the challenge of referring to the doctoral student cohort in the singular, we wish to provide an overview of the group by briefly summarising statistics for 2024 from the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ).
The overview of the doctoral student cohort highlights a number of trends that are relevant to further research into vulnerability within academia. It confirms:
- that the group is diverse,
- that the gender composition follows traditional norms regarding male- and female-coded courses and professions,
- that internationalisation is particularly high in certain research subject areas, and
- that funding arrangements and job security can vary
Admissions to doctoral programmes
In recent years, the number of students admitted to doctoral programmes in Sweden has hovered around 18,000–20,000, with a steady decline in the number of new doctoral students over the past 10 years. Women were permitted to doctoral programmes at Swedish universities in 1837, and since then the proportion of female doctoral students has risen steadily. In 2024, 52% of doctoral students were women and 48% were men. However, gender segregation persists, with women forming the majority in the research fields of medicine and health, social sciences and the humanities, whilst men form the majority in engineering and natural sciences.
Form of employment/funding
The form of employment has changed significantly, but in slightly different ways: employment as a doctoral student has increased and the form of employment was held by 65% of doctoral students in 2024. Doctoral student employment involves special fixed-term contracts for doctoral students, provides greater security than other available forms of funding, and is regulated by Chapter 5 of the Higher Education Ordinance. If we look at the figures broken down by gender (women and men), the distribution does not differ significantly from the total. The biggest difference is that twice as many male doctoral students are industrial doctoral students, that is employed by a company but undertaking their doctoral studies at a university, although this still represents a small proportion of the total (7% vs 3.6%), whilst female doctoral students are more likely to be employed as medical doctors whilst pursuing their doctoral studies in medical subjects than their male counterparts (20% vs 15%).
International doctoral students
The number of international doctoral students – defined as individuals who have come to Sweden to undertake their doctoral studies – is clearly increasing over time, and by 2024 they account for 37% of the total number of doctoral students. There are more male international doctoral students than female ones, but here too we are seeing a trend towards an increase in the number of women.
International doctoral students are distributed differently across research subject areas, both in terms of background and gender. Based on these variables, the largest group within natural sciences and engineering is male international students. A majority of the doctoral student cohort within the same subjects consists of international doctoral students (including both women and men). In medicine and health, the pattern is reversed, with international doctoral students accounting for around a quarter of all doctoral students, and international male doctoral students constituting the single smallest group.
