International doctoral students in the area of “Sciences” at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

Resumen

The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) is a generalist university, offering doctoral education in the five areas of knowledge:1) Sciences,2) Engineering and Architecture,3) Health Sciences,4) Social and Legal Sciences and5) Arts and Humanities. Since the UPV/EHU is the only public university in the Basque Country, there is a large number of doctoral students enrolled in any of the 66 doctoral programs offered. Among doctoral students, close to 4000 in the last years, there is a majority of women (52.58% in 2022).On the other hand, the area of Sciences in particular is the one with the highest rate of completion of doctoral studies: for example, in 2021, 28.8% of all doctoral theses at the UPV/EHU were defended by 23.5% of the students in Sciences. The completion of doctoral studies may be at risk for international doctoral students who face greater difficulties than national ones because they have to live in a different academic and social environment than in their home countries.Of the UPV/EHU doctoral students, almost 25% are international and come from 55 countries (mainly from Latin America). In fact, the top 5 countries of origin are Colombia, Italy, Chile, Dominican Republic and Ecuador. The gender distribution for international doctoral students is slightly in favour of men (50.35%); while among national doctoral students there is a higher difference in favour of women (53.52%).In this context, the aim of this work is to analyse the group of international UPV/EHU doctoral students in the field of Sciences, in order to establish their characteristics in relation to the rest of the international UPV/EHU doctoral students. To this end, the methodology used consists of analysing the origin of the international doctoral students in this area. The study includes differentiation by gender.The results show that male students are especially represented (57,56% in Sciences), while the percentage of them over all students in Sciences is a lower (50,72%) but still predominant. Additionally, the top 5 countries of origin are Italy, Colombia, France, India and China.