Region grapples with how to retain foreign PhD graduates

As the number of local students opting for doctoral studies declines and the need for high-level skills grows, governments in Norway and other Nordic countries are recognising the value of effective strategies to increase the number of international PhD graduates that stay.

In Norway, the proportion of international doctoral candidates admitted at Norwegian universities has increased dramatically from 13% in 2000 to 48% in 2023, but approximately half of them leave Norway upon graduation, according to the Ministry of Education’s recent report to parliament, Secure Knowledge in an Uncertain World.

This proportion of PhD graduates choosing to leave their host country is broadly replicated – and in some cases exceeded – in other countries in the region, such as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

To give some idea of the indication of the costs involved in such losses, in Norway in 2023 the equivalent of 6,356 work-years were produced by PhD grantholders.

The Norwegian Research Council calculates a work year for a PhD to cost NOK1,312,000, which means a total of NOK9 billion (US$857 million) was spent on the PhD education process.

Norwegian research strategy

The Norwegian government recently presented a national research strategy document which includes, inter alia, the formation of an expert group to evaluate the doctoral training system as well as the barriers to recruitment of students and, in the case of international students, their retention.

“Over the last decades, the number of those taking a doctorate degree has more than doubled. It is not clear how this growth matches the needs of the labour market.

“We need an overview of how the future doctorate training should be to meet the need in society for research competence, both in the academy and in the workplace. This also means securing the conditions for open, curiosity-driven research,” Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland said.

The new strategy document calls for a “targeted policy for international recruitment” which would address the barriers to recruitment of doctoral students in Norway, which receives fewer international degree students when compared to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.

It notes that there are reasons to believe that a lack of incentives to retain students and researchers contributes to Norway losing talent to international competitors.

It states that after the introduction in 2023 of tuition fees for students from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland, there has been a sharp reduction of students from beyond the European Union.

“The way the tuition fee is set indicates that tuition fees are making us less competitive. Other countries also have had in place targeted instruments to attract talented international students,” it notes.

The government is considering the formation of a recruitment unit that will “disseminate opportunities and connect newly educated researchers with businesses and assist both Norwegian and international graduates in the application process”, the strategy states.

As part of plans to improve the competitiveness of Norway’s research sector, the Norwegian Research Council announced in a press release on 31 March that the country’s seven national doctorate schools would receive NOK 112 million (US$10.7 million) in order to make doctorate training “more relevant for working life”.

“We need more research competence both in the working life, in business and in the public sector. Researchers contribute to making the doctorate training more relevant and cross-scientific.

“Therefore, I am glad to be able to strengthen the doctorate schools. The doctorate schools are a supplement to the higher education doctorate programmes,” Aasland was quoted as saying.

Sweden

According to a Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKA) overview of higher education and research, in 2022, 6,300 foreign doctoral students were enrolled at Swedish higher education institutions, making up 37% of all doctoral students.
Most foreign doctoral students were from Asia (2,400).

The most common countries of origin were China (850), India (508) and Iran (450). The next largest group was from the EU outside the Nordic region (1,750), with Germany (469) and Italy (314) leading the way.

Of those who began doctoral studies in Sweden in 2022, 42% were foreign citizens, and in the field of natural sciences, this proportion was as high as 63%.

At the same time, statistics show that a large proportion of doctoral students leave the country after completing their studies, a fact that critics link to migration law regulations.

Hanna Flodmark, director of communications and marketing at the Stockholm School of Economics, told University World News competition for PhD applications for this academic year, 2025 to 2026, was “fierce”.

“The number of applications we received in 2025 was the highest ever at the PhD level, and the quality of the applicants was also higher than usual,” she said.

For the three doctoral degree programmes at the school – the PhD in Finance, PhD in Economics, and PhD in Business Administration – there were 828 applicants, 37 of whom were Swedes (4.5%).

In the Finance PhD there were 122 applications from 28 different countries, the largest number coming from China (46), Iran (33), and Italy (6). From Sweden there were only three applicants.

For the PhD in Economics, there were 304 applications from 60 countries, the largest number coming from China (49), Italy (46), Iran (30), India (24), and Germany (22). From Sweden there were 14 applications.

In the Business Administration PhD, there were 402 applications from 66 countries, the largest being Iran (65), China (49), India (40), Pakistan (34), and Nigeria (32). From Sweden there were 20 applications.

Mats Benner, a professor in science policy studies at Lund University’s School of Economics and Management and past member of the Swedish government’s Research Advisory Board (2009 to 2010, 2015 to 2016), told University World News: “Swedish PhD training has been thoroughly internationalised in the last decades and is critically dependent on international recruitment – in particular within the STEM areas.

“However, the growing emphasis on security screening and hikes in defence-related expenditure may make it necessary to balance the global flow with domestic recruitments. This will be a major challenge for Swedish universities which have come to rely on the global supply of talent.

“The remedy? An overhaul of undergraduate education to attune Swedish students to research from early on would be one. Another would be to engage university professors more in bachelor programmes. In today’s funding climate with the heavy reliance on external grants, professors are virtually invisible there.”

Finland

According to the first progress report of the Finnish National Doctoral Education Pilot published on 18 March, 52% of doctoral researchers are foreigners, 82% plan to write their doctoral thesis in a language other than Finnish national languages, and 78% are interested in working in companies in Finland after graduation.

Professor Michael Jeltsch at the IndiviDrug Research Programme and Wihuri Research Institute based at the University of Helsinki told University World News that Finland was one of the few countries that defied the general rule that every new generation is more highly educated than the previous one.

He said that Finland was falling behind other OECD countries when it came to the percentage of citizens with higher education.

“Domestic applicants are losing interest in higher education. But because our industry needs a highly educated workforce, we try to make up for it by importing talent. But we fail to keep them in the country because our society is deeply introverted and some of it is even xenophobic,” he noted.

The conscious effort to internationalise doctoral education was partly motivated by the fact that it is a factor in various international university rankings, he said.

“Now, about one-third of doctoral students in Finland are foreigners. Clearly, we are not educating them for the domestic job market,” he observed.

Jeltsch said that the concurrent push to squeeze doctoral education into three or maximally four years makes it impossible for foreign PhD students to find time to learn the local language or to forge any meaningful bonds to the country.

“My own experience as a supervisor of doctoral students is just that: many of them know that it is very difficult for them to find a job in Finland after graduation.

“They appreciate the (free) education and use Finland as a jump station on their way to some other country. In the past, it has been mostly the US, but it is not clear whether the US will be able to maintain its attractiveness,” he said.

He noted that the problem of skills retention increases with education level because the smarter the people, the better their options.

“Our problem is not only the incomprehensible language but rather [also] the difficulties and prejudices that foreigners face when applying for jobs and the increasingly hostile atmosphere towards foreigners, which has been exacerbated by the right-wing government.

“While admitting that Finland needs work-based immigration, our government tightens the rules and makes integration more difficult. For example, applying for citizenship is now only possible after eight years of residence instead of five previously,” he said.

Jeltsch described the government’s policies around skills retention as “not coherent”.

He explained: “On the one hand, [the government is] pouring many millions into PhD education while at the same time cutting financial support for students. This is not a clear signal.

“In our programme (the international Masters Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety), the number of applicants almost doubled every year since its inception, and last year the admission services and evaluators had to work overtime to verify and rank the applications.

“This year, we saw for the first time a slight drop in application numbers. The percentage of domestic applicants this year was around 15%, which is 100% more than last year.

“We attribute both the drop in total applications and the increase of domestic applicants to the introduction of a €100 (US$108) application fee (which the domestic and EU and EEA applicants do not need to pay). Most of our applications come from Asian and African countries,” he stated.

Jeltsch said while the number of domestic applicants sounds low, there was a corresponding and very popular Finnish language programme which absorbed many of the domestic applications.

“I do not have the numbers at hand for the PhD applications, but I receive email requests from prospective PhD students requesting a PhD education almost on a daily basis. All of them are from abroad,” he said.

Denmark

Frede Blaabjerg, a professor in the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University and chairperson of the Danish Council for Research and Innovation Policy, told University World News similar trends concerning the loss of PhD graduates were evident in Denmark.

“We see the same trend in DK, with more and more from abroad and some challenges to keep them all,” he said.

He noted that there were initiatives afoot to address some of the barriers facing graduates which would make it easier or simpler for foreign nationals to stay on in the country.

“I also think we should train our PhD students to look towards other segments other than universities. Many companies employ PhDs today, as well as entrepreneurship and start-ups. These should be an obvious option for PhDs to go toward,” he said.

Blaabjerg said the shortage of national candidates could be explained by “better salaries” and greater job security in the private sector.

“Here emphasis, of course, could be placed on the masters level, to better integrate it with the research environment and thereby [help to] make it a natural choice to continue in the university environment despite lower salary,” he added.

Christian Kjær Monsson, head of research policy at Danish Industry, told University World News that around 45% of international PhD candidates leave Denmark the year after their graduation.

“That’s a shame, because many of them have highly specialised competences that could be of great use in Danish companies. I think that university and industry have to work much more closely together in order to show the international PhDs the many career opportunities for researchers in Danish companies,” he said.

Private sector contributions

Professor Bjørn Stensaker, vice-rector of education at the University of Oslo, told University World News there were “both pros and cons” related to the fact that many foreigners obtaining a PhD in the Nordic countries were leaving.

“We do need skilled labour with this kind of competence in the Nordic countries, but we should also ask ourselves why we are not able to keep many of those that come from abroad to take a PhD in the Nordic region.

“They cannot all work in universities. They need to find work in private businesses and in industry, and the question is whether we have a business sector that is able to exploit the huge potential of these candidates? At least in Norway, one could argue that the private sector is not really investing much in R&D,” he stated.

“A positive effect of the departure of our PhDs is that they are not shutting down all links to their alma mater. On the contrary, they contribute to expanding our academic networks to new countries and universities, and they are examples of how international science works in practice.

“We have many examples of new types of collaborations that have been established as a result of departing PhDs. This can benefit both research and educational collaboration in the long run.

“It should also be mentioned that some of the foreigners taking a PhD in Norway are from countries that need to build up their own knowledge sector, and by assisting the build-up of knowledge, we do contribute to a more sustainable world,” Stensaker noted.