Doctoral TrainingUniversität Heidelberg has Most Doctoral Students in Germany

Heidelberg University has the largest number of doctoral students in Germany. The Federal Statistical Office (Wiesbaden) reports that last year 9,000 students were registered as doing doctoral research, the same as at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The two universities occupy the top position in Germany, followed by LMU Munich with 8,100 and RWTH Aachen University with 7,600 doctoral students. Together with the University of Bonn (6,500) and TUD Dresden University of Technology (6,400), just under a quarter of all doctoral students in Germany conduct their research at these six universities.

In 2023 a total of 204.900 graduates – 52 percent male and 48 percent female – had embarked on a doctoral course at German universities; this figure is slightly below the 2022 figure of 205,300 doctoral students. About a quarter of the doctoral students, i.e. 48,900 doctoral students or 24 percent, were of foreign nationality. 54,900 doctoral students or 27 percent were working towards their doctorate in the subject group Human Medicine/Health Sciences in the last year. The second largest group was doctoral candidates in the subject group Mathematics and Natural Sciences, accounting for 23 percent or 47,000, followed by the Engineering Sciences with 38,000 doctoral students (19 percent) and Law, Economics and Social Sciences with 32,800 doctoral students or 16 percent.

These findings on the number of current doctoral students stem from a survey of the Federal Statistical Office introduced in 2017. It covers everyone enrolled for a doctorate at a university in Germany.