Salaries for doctoral graduates greatly reduced – Report

Doctoral training in Sweden is providing significantly lower economic returns compared to the year 2001. On average the salary premium for doctoral degrees has sunk by 20% in 2022 compared to 2001, according to a new report, published by Saco, the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations, which represents 21 unions and 960,000 members

“The proportion of employees with a doctoral degree has increased significantly over the last two decades,” says the report, Salary returns for doctoral graduates – Development during the 2000s, which was written by Håkan Regnér and Linda Simonsen.

Early in 2000 the proportion of doctoral research trained personnel in the workforce was 1%. By 2022 this had increased to 1.6%, or a 60% increase, over two decades.

However, during this same period, salary benefits for having taken a doctoral degree have stagnated, the report said. “It is a worrying development that doctoral education pays less and less. In the long run, this can weaken the national economy.”

A changing doctoral population

During the period 2001 to 2022 the proportion of women doctoral graduates increased from 28% to 44%. The proportion of doctoral graduates born outside Sweden increased from 21% to 37%.

In recent years approximately 3,000 new doctoral students have been admitted every year and by the autumn of 2022 there were approximately 17,000 active doctoral students in Sweden. Of these 41% were from other countries.

After three years upon graduation approximately. 40% of foreign doctorate graduates remained in Sweden. During the last 15 years the proportion of the Swedish population starting upon research training has been reduced by more than 50%.

Among those starting doctoral training in 2022 54% were women and 46% men. This was the fourth year in a row with more women admitted than men. In 1990 one third of doctoral students were women. In the health sciences 63% were women in 2022.

Other characteristics of the doctoral population evidenced in the report are:

• 44% work in the public sector in 2022, 41% in the private sector, 3% in the community sector and 13% in the regional sector.

• The private sector increased its share of research trained personnel by 7% during the period 2001 to 2022.

• Research trained people account for 1% of all employees in the private sector in 2022 and 14% of those employed in the public sector.

• The largest average fall in salary gain among doctoral graduates was 52% in the community sector, 38% in the private sector and 18% in the regional sector.

• Women have a higher economic return of their doctoral training compared to men, but for both sexes this economic return was lower in 2022 compared to 2001.

Doctoral education not seen as ‘rewarding or relevant’

Karin Åmossa, Head of Policy and International Affairs at SULF, the Association of University Teachers and Researchers, said that Sweden is in need of highly qualified competence to meet the challenges of today and the future.

“The report is not finding why the premium for taking a research degree is falling. In the report some explanations are proposed, among these that the competence shortage is leading to graduates working with tasks that do not demand doctoral training.

“The results demonstrate that employers are not good at exploiting the general competence of the doctoral candidates outside the expertise they have in their field of knowledge. Those who have taken a doctoral degree have a competence to critically judge new and complex knowledge and the ability to identify the need for new knowledge,” Åmossa said.

“To fill this need, employers seeking experts have to evaluate the contribution of people with research training more. The salary reduction is highest in the private sector which means that employers are not valuing the competence sufficiently positive. And the universities have to become better in lifting the benefit the increased competence of doctoral training provides,” Åmossa stated.

Åmossa told University World News: “Maybe we should put more emphasis on the need for attractive careers in academia if we want to be able to meet the challenges that the future brings. To solve future (unknown) problems we need talented people that want to stay in academia.”

When asked for comment Topias Tolonen-Weckström, chairperson of the Doctoral Committee at the Swedish National Union of Students, told University World News: “Based on the report only, it’s difficult to make a strong inference, as the doctoral base has shifted dramatically since 2001.

“For example, it was reported that even though the average salary premium for doctoral education decreased, the premium increased slightly for women. Moreover, since the share of foreign PhDs in Sweden has also increased, for example, it’s difficult to make a sound comparison between the two time points.”

Tolonen-Weckström noted: “However, the general picture reported is worrying. In Sweden, the amount of Swedish students in doctoral education is decreasing, and according to the report, the lack of economic incentive to complete this demanding education is decreasing.

“These two facts cannot be uncorrelated: we are worried that doctoral education is not seen as rewarding or relevant. Despite the data measuring quite an old age cohort and thus not revealing much about the salary progression for young professionals, it’s clear that short-term, doctoral education has a very high opportunity cost.

“To combat this, employers should be more knowledgeable of what utility and benefits a PhD working for your company produces, and the higher education institutions should fine-tune their learning outcomes so that a fresh PhD would be highly valued, no matter which career path they wished to pursue.”

When asked for comment Simonsen, one of the Saco report authors, told University World News: “The results are in line with earlier studies by Saco where we found that the premium for the longest university degree (masters) is falling over time. This somewhat surprised us since the common picture is that the demand for qualified and in-depth knowledge is high.

“The results are worrying. A lower premium for having a doctoral degree may lower the incentives to get one. In the long run this may affect both the economy, the competence supply and the quality of research and education.”

She concluded: “Saco is continuously pushing the importance and value of qualified in-depth knowledge and higher education. Saco also stresses that the competence gained from a long university education must be better used in society and by employers.

“For many years, Saco has emphasised the importance of better terms of employment, working environment and career paths for researchers both inside and outside the university. Saco promotes this through analyses, debates and by forming opinion as well as by direct dialogue with the government to influence political decision making”.

Göran Melin, a higher education and research expert at Technopolis Group in Stockholm, told University World News: “If we believe that our society benefits from highly educated people and that there should be an economic return for those who pursue higher education and graduate with even a PhD degree, then all trends investigated in this report seem to go in the wrong direction in Sweden, with the exception that the relative economic return of women’s doctorate training compared to men’s is improved.

“Altogether this is a sign of a public as well as a private labour market that does not recognise nor award formal competence of the most advanced level. Is it because of ignorance for research training merits, or is the training not relevant enough for the labour market? I think academia and labour market representatives need to confer thoroughly about this.”