Around 527,600 students and doctoral candidates earned academic degrees from German universities during the assessment year 2025, which encompassed the Winter Semester 2024/2025 and the Summer Semester 2025. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), this number represents a three percent increase, or 16,000 more graduates, compared to the 2024 assessment year. The percentage of female graduates remained stable at 53 percent.
In the 2025 assessment year, nearly every second degree (49 percent, totaling 256,000) was a Bachelor’s degree (excluding teaching qualifications). This figure marked a four percent rise, or 10,400 more than the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of Master’s degrees (excluding teaching qualifications) grew by 1.0 percent, adding 1,500 to reach 150,800. Master’s degrees maintained their share of all degrees at 29 percent, the same as the prior year.
Teaching-related qualifications accounted for one in ten degrees (51,700) in 2025. This included 19,300 Bachelor’s degrees (which generally do not qualify for teaching immediately), 21,500 Master’s degrees, and 10,900 State Examination degrees. Furthermore, the total number of Master’s and State Examination degrees qualifying for teaching increased by six percent compared to the previous year, rising from 30,400 to 32,400.
Promotion degrees, or PhDs, made up 28,800, which is five percent of all degrees awarded in 2025. This means that 2.4 percent, or 700 more people than the previous year, obtained their doctorate.
Other recognized qualifications included 32,100 conventional university and artistic degrees (such as non-teaching State Examinations and university diplomas) and 8,200 conventional university of applied sciences degrees (such as university of applied sciences diplomas).
When grouped by field of study, Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences were the most popular, accounting for 41 percent of all degrees. Engineering sciences followed, with one in four degrees (25 percent) falling into this category. Eleven percent of university degrees were awarded in Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and nine percent in Humanities. Seven percent of degrees were obtained in Human Medicine/Health Sciences, with the remaining percentages distributed across sports, agriculture, forestry, and nutrition sciences, veterinary medicine, and art/fine arts.
