Doctor (academic and medical title)

Today, admission to the doctoral process generally requires a Master's, Magister, Diplom or licentiate degree from a university. In the subjects of law, veterinary medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and medicine, as well as in some teacher training courses, the degree is completed with a state examination. This is also the admission requirement for a doctorate.

In exceptional cases and depending on the federal state, particularly qualified graduates of universities of applied sciences or Bachelor's graduates of other universities can also be admitted within the framework of an aptitude test, but this usually requires additional study achievements at Master's level, which can take several semesters.

At some faculties of the humanities, it used to be possible for outstanding students in the major and minor subjects to be admitted to doctoral studies without a previous final examination, as an exception, after two professorial reviews. This so-called "single-track" doctorate is no longer possible. The "undergraduate" doctorate, in which the doctorate is the only degree sought from the beginning of the course, was also abolished for the vast majority of subjects at most universities in Germany around 1990 at the latest.

Most doctoral regulations also require certain overall or examination grades (generally: at least the overall grade "good", for lawyers predominantly "fully satisfactory") for admission to a doctorate or a doctoral programme.

For the doctorate, a written work (dissertation or doctoral thesis) must be prepared that contains new scientific findings. The writing of this thesis usually takes two to five years, depending on the subject; during this time the doctoral candidate is supervised by a mostly habilitated scientist (doctoral supervisor), generally a professor. The entitlement to supervise doctoral students varies from faculty to faculty. Thus, depending on the respective doctoral regulations, most university teachers, i.e. habilitated private lecturers as well as professors (regardless of whether they are habilitated) and junior professors, can often act as doctoral supervisors. The necessary effort and the required level vary extremely from subject to subject, sometimes even from supervisor to supervisor, since (not only in Germany) there are no uniform guidelines.

In the natural sciences, but sometimes also in the humanities, a cumulative doctorate is possible on the basis of several scientific publications in specialist journals. In this case, the study results are published in thematically related articles instead of in a monograph.

Depending on the doctoral regulations, the doctoral thesis may be completed internally, at the university, or externally, at another institution. In the case of an external doctorate, at least one of the reviewers must be affiliated with the university awarding the degree.

The oral doctoral examination is conducted by selected faculty representatives and consists of a disputation in which the theses submitted by the doctoral candidate are discussed, a defense in which the dissertation is defended, a viva voce in which additional subjects or topics are examined, or several procedures combined from the three examination options.

The procedure is regulated by the doctoral regulations of the individual faculties or departments. After all examinations have been completed, the doctoral candidate usually receives his or her provisional doctoral certificate. In Germany, dissertations are generally subject to mandatory publication. The thesis must be made publicly accessible within a certain period of time, whereby many doctoral regulations now also recognise online publication (in addition to publication as a normal book, as a special university publication or as a microfiche). Only with the publication of the dissertation is the procedure finally completed. After that, the doctoral candidate receives the doctoral certificate and thus the right to use the academic degree. In the doctoral regulations of some universities, the doctoral candidate is given the opportunity to use the degree of Dr. des. (doctor designatus). Other doctoral regulations expressly prohibit the use of this degree.

Doctorates in medicine take on a special role. On the one hand, work on the dissertation can begin even before the end of studies, and on the other hand, doctorates are often more comparable to diploma theses in natural science subjects in terms of demands and scope. For this reason, the German Dr. med. (doctor medicinae) is not considered equivalent to the Ph.D. in Anglo-Saxon countries today, but is treated like a professional doctorate with a Master's thesis. The German Science Council has taken a similar position since 2009.

Special features also exist in the recognition of the M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree awarded in the USA and its Czech and Slovak equivalent MUDr (medicinae universae doctor). Both degrees are professional doctorates that are awarded without a doctorate after completion of studies. The European Research Council (ERC) does not recognise the M. D. as equivalent to a doctoral degree, but requires individual verification as to whether it is a research doctorate or whether the applicant has completed clinical training.

In 2010, a total of 25,500 doctoral degrees were awarded at German universities and equivalent institutions of higher education. Nationwide, the doctorate rate in 2010 was 1.1 doctorates per professor; in 2002, there were 1.0 doctorates per professor. In Germany, a total of about 1.3% of the population was awarded the academic degree of doctor, in the USA about 1.5%.

Since the proportion of academics in the German population has risen sharply in recent decades, the number of doctoral graduates among younger Germans has also increased, albeit not proportionally: in 2004, 2.7% of an average age cohort in Baden-Württemberg were awarded the academic degree of doctor, in Hamburg 3.4% and Berlin 3.1%, and in Germany as a whole 2.1%. In the OECD countries, by contrast, only 1.3% of a cohort successfully completed a doctorate. The first places in the OECD comparison were occupied by: Sweden with 3.1 %, Switzerland 2.7 %, Portugal 2.5 % followed by Germany.

The average age at doctorate in Germany in 2001 was 32.8 years. In Germany, the doctoral rate in 2001 was 1.4 % for women and 2.4 % for men.

The number of graduates who go on to complete a doctorate varies greatly from subject to subject. The lowest doctorate rate, at around 6%, is in the field of architecture. In contrast, the doctorate rate in biology, for example, is around 86%, in chemistry around 79%, in physics around 64% and in medicine around 63%.

In 2009, 30.8% of doctorates in Germany were awarded in medicine, 29.7% in the mathematical and natural sciences, 14.2% in law and economics, 10.5% in linguistics and cultural studies, 9.4% in engineering, 1.9% in agriculture and forestry, 1.0% in the arts and 0.4% in sports science. This means that three quarters of doctorates are awarded in medicine and the natural sciences, law and economics; by contrast, only about one in ten doctorates is awarded in the humanities.