The time taken to earn a doctorate in the United States varies by more than six years depending on the field, according to federal figures analysed by dissertation coaching firm Grad Coach. Education doctorates take a median of 12.3 years from the start of graduate school. In the physical sciences the figure is 6.0.
The comparison is drawn from the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, which counts every research doctorate awarded by a United States institution rather than sampling a subset. In 2024 that was 58,131 people. The median across all fields was 7.3 years.
“The education doctorates we work with are nearly always part-time, and the student is holding down a full-time job while they do it, usually in a school, a district or a university department,” said Derek Jansen, Founder of Grad Coach.
Grad Coach argues that a single headline number is misleading, because three different clocks are in common use: one running from the bachelor’s degree, one from the start of graduate school, and one from the start of the doctoral programme itself. A prospective student comparing options may be quoted whichever measure a given source happens to prefer, without being told which one it is.
The analysis covers United States data only, and says so throughout. Asked why it carries no United Kingdom equivalent, the company points to the absence of a published figure.
“Nobody publishes a median [for the UK], and I am not going to estimate one. I would rather leave a gap here than fill it with something I cannot stand behind,” said Jansen.
The full analysis, How Long Does a PhD Really Take?, is published at https://gradcoach.com/how-long-does-a-phd-take/
