The percent of Ph.D. students graduating with loan debt varies by campus and by discipline.

In general, Ph.D. students in the social sciences, arts and humanities are more likely to graduate with loan debt than students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

A number of factors may account for this, most notably the fact that doctoral students in the STEM fields are more likely to be supported by federal research grants than students in the social sciences, arts and humanities.

Doctoral students in the social sciences, arts and humanities also take longer to complete their degrees, which tends to increase their debt levels as well.

Source: UC Corporate Student System.

Figures represent the percent of academic Ph.D. recipients who took out at least one student loan while they were enrolled at UC. Ph.D. students who also earned other graduate degrees at UC were excluded, as were Ph.D. students in professional disciplines - i.e., students completing programs with two-digit Classification of Instruction Programs (CIP) codes 04, 13, 22, 25, 39, 44, 51, 52 or four-digit CIP code 09.04.

Disciplinary categories were based on the two-digit CIP codes as listed below.

• Physical Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics: 11, 14, 27, 40
• Life Science: 01, 03, 06
• Social Science: 42, 45, 52
• Arts and Humanities: 10, 16, 23, 24, 38, 50, 54
• Other Disciplines: all others

You may view or download a table of the raw data used to generate these charts in CSV files, which can be opened in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.

• UW Graph 1HTML | CSV
• UW Graph 2HTML | CSV
• UW Graph 3HTML | CSV
• UW Graph 4HTML | CSV