40 percent of doctorates in Norway are by foreigners

StudentsStudents. Photo: pixabay.com

Last year a new record was set for the proportion of doctorates in this country by people with foreign citizenship.

According to figures from NIFU, 532 of 1,410 doctorates in Norway were submitted by individuals with foreign citizenship.

It is a record high percentage of almost 40 percent, and in the technological area foreigners accounted for two out of three doctorates. The lowest percent was in medicine, where only one in four thesis papers were signed by people with foreign passports.

– Norway probably has the best PhD terms in the world. There is a decent salary, sick leave pay and pension contribution, says Sofie Høgestøl, Head of the fellowship organization UiODoc to Forskning.no.

The proportion has risen by 10 percentage points in seven years. Among the nearly 90 nations represented, almost half of the foreign citizens were from European countries, 30 percent came from Asia, 13 percent from Africa, while 9 percent were from North or South America.

Among the doctoral candidates last year, 30 percent of the women and 45 percent of the men had foreign citizenship.

Høgestøl believes they are a great resource because Norwegian students and researchers are poor to travel abroad.

– Foreign scientists can make the research groups more dynamic. With an education from elsewhere, they may have other approaches. An international scientist adds a diversity of expertise that you would not have had otherwise, she says.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today