By the Numbers: What Counts as STEM Education?

In 2022, the National Science Foundation produced a report, Higher Education in Science and Engineering, which looked at key indicators for all graduates in science and engineering fields from many nations. In terms of percentages of all students receiving their first degrees, science and engineering accounts for as many as 47 percent of graduates in Russia and only 25 percent in Brazil, but most major countries are around 40 percent, including the United States.
 
What differs is the mix of STEM degrees. Some countries award far more social and behavioral degrees than engineering ones. In others the reverse is true: Germany, for instance, awards three times as many engineering degrees and India four times as many. Among all the countries listed in the NSF report, some 17 percent of graduates received engineering degrees, while nearly 8 percent got social and behavioral science degrees—nearly the opposite of the mix in the U.S. See the chart below for the comparisons.