German doctoral students at universities in selected host countries since 2013

There is currently no harmonised data source that provides information on all German doctoral students abroad. In order to be able to examine German doctoral students in various host countries, data from the OECD, the German Federal Statistical Office, the US Student and Exchange Visitor Information System and Universiteiten van Nederland were therefore combined.
For the 2023 academic year, 14,008 German doctoral students at universities abroad were recorded using the data sources described above.
The number of German doctoral students in Switzerland fell from 3,605 in 2013 to 3,260 in 2023. In Austria, this number rose from 2,266 in 2013 to 2,535 in 2023, while in the United Kingdom it fell from 2,361 to 1,637. In the USA, the number of German doctoral students fell slightly from 1,286 to 1,193 between 2014 and 2023. In the Netherlands, their number rose from 554 to 783 between 2013 and 2023.
In relative terms, the number of German doctoral candidates has increased particularly in the Netherlands. In absolute terms, the number of German doctoral candidates in Austria has also risen in recent years, but has not yet returned to the peak recorded in 2014. The number of German doctoral candidates has fallen significantly since 2018 in the United Kingdom (presumably as a result of Brexit) and since 2020 in Australia (presumably as a result of the coronavirus pandemic). In Switzerland, the United States, Sweden and France, the numbers of German doctoral candidates have remained fairly constant.