More than 6,000 doctorates in psychology were awarded by U.S. institutions1 for the 2011–12 academic year, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
The majority of doctoral degrees in psychology were classified as research/scholarship (74 percent), with fewer designated as professional practice (24 percent) or other types (1 percent).2
More than half (54 percent) of psychology doctorates were awarded in health service psychology subfields.3
This continues a 30-year growth trend in these subfields. The largest increases have been in clinical, counseling and school psychology.1
Continuing a 30-year increasing trend, women earned about 74 percent of these degrees.1
Also continuing a 30-year increasing trend, approximately 22 percent of doctorates in psychology were earned by minorities: 9 percent Hispanic/Latino, 7 percent Black/African-American, 5 percent Asian, 1 percent two or more races and less than 1 percent American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian.1 About 5 percent were awarded to nonresident alien students.
Karen Stamm, PhD, Peggy Christidis, PhD, Auntré Hamp, MEd, MPH, Andrew Nigrinis, PhD, of APA's Center for Workforce Studies.
1. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). (1984–2012). Completions surveys. [Data files and dictionaries]. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/DataFiles.
2. IPEDS CIP codes for instructional programs were used to identify subfields. IPEDS doctoral degree categories were used to identify types of doctoral degrees. Definitions can be found in the IPEDS glossary: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/glossary.
3. Subfields classified as health service psychology can be found in Table 3 of the APA Member Profiles: www.apa.org/workforce/publications/13-member/table-3.pdf.
