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Statistics about
Credits and graduations from higher education
The statistics on graduations and credits from higher education include all completed degrees and credits attained during the period from October 1 to September 30. Completed degrees and credits attained from abroad are not included.
Selected figures from this statistics
- Graduations and credits awarded by universities and colleges in NorwayDownload table as ...Graduations and credits awarded by universities and colleges in Norway
2013-2014 2023-2024 Total Female share Total Female share Graduations Total 45 013 61.1 58 757 59.7 Of which Bachelor's degrees 26 309 62.7 32 642 59.8 Master's degrees1 12 007 50.6 20 859 59.9 Ph.D.s 1 442 49.4 1 817 54.5 Total number of students 280 351 59.5 315 077 60.8 Credits awarded, per cent 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 0 credits 15.0 12.6 13.7 12.4 1-29 credits 20.1 19.9 18.0 17.7 30-59 credits 28.2 29.5 28.0 28.8 60 credits or more 36.7 38.0 40.3 41.0 1Include both 2-year and 5-year master’s degrees. Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Graduations in selected programmes and immigration categoryDownload table as ...Graduations in selected programmes and immigration category
2023-2024 Numbers Per cent Number of graduates Immigrants Norwegian-born to immigrant parents Other population Males Bachelor's studies 13 112 10.4 5.7 83.9 Of these Bachelor degree, pre-school-/kindergarten teacher training 313 15.7 7.7 76.7 Bachelor degree,vocational teacher, foundation programme 184 3.8 2.2 94.0 Bachelor degree, engineering, foundation programme 2 002 13.3 5.1 81.6 Bachelor degree, nursing, foundation programme 555 22.0 2.3 75.7 Bachelor degree, Business and Administration subjects 3 225 7.4 6.2 86.4 Master's studies1 8 366 17.5 3.9 78.6 Of these Master degree, law 292 3.8 5.5 90.8 Master degree, pharmacy 29 41.4 10.3 48.3 Master degree, odontology 27 18.5 7.4 74.1 Business and economics graduate/Master degree, economics and administration 766 6.3 4.7 89.0 Master degree, teacher training 293 : : 88.1 Master degree, primary and lower secondary teacher education 584 2.4 4.3 93.3 Master of Technologi/Graduate engineering degree 1 836 16.0 4.1 79.8 Professional education (5.5 - 6 years) 262 7.6 4.6 87.8 Cand.med. degree 182 9.3 5.5 85.2 Cand.theol. degree 8 . 12.5 87.5 Cand.psychol. degree 66 4.5 1.6 93.9 Cand.med.vet. degree (Veterinary Science) 6 . . 100.0 Doctoral degrees2 826 51.7 1.7 46.6 Females Bachelor's studies 19 530 11.7 4.6 83.7 Of these Bachelor degree, pre-school-/kindergarten teacher training 1 646 14.9 5.3 79.8 Bachelor degree,vocational teacher, foundation programme 226 8.0 1.8 90.3 Bachelor degree, engineering, foundation programme 509 14.1 6.5 79.4 Bachelor degree, nursing, foundation programme 3 311 11.5 2.5 86.0 Bachelor degree, Business and Administration subjects 3 124 11.7 4.6 83.8 Master's studies1 12 493 13.6 3.4 83.0 Of these Master degree, law 519 4.2 5.4 90.4 Master degree, pharmacy 111 27.0 20.7 52.3 Master degree, odontology 102 20.6 8.8 70.6 Business and economics graduate/Master degree, economics and administration 428 8.2 5.8 86.0 Master degree, teacher training 510 : : 90.6 Master degree, primary and lower secondary teacher education 1 596 2.5 2.8 94.7 Master of Technologi/Graduate engineering degree 868 14.1 4.5 81.5 Professional education (5.5 - 6 years) 736 7.1 5.8 87.1 Cand.med. degree 415 7.0 8.4 84.6 Cand.theol. degree 11 . . 100.0 Cand.psychol. degree 233 6.9 3.4 89.7 Cand.med.vet. degree (Veterinary Science) 77 9.1 . 90.9 Doctoral degrees2 991 39.9 2.0 58.1 1Include both 2-year and 5-year master's degrees. 2Doctoral degrees Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Field of education and level for graduations in higher educationDownload table as ...Field of education and level for graduations in higher education
2013-2014 2023-2024 Total Percentage women Total Percentage women Level of degree and field of education Total 45 013 61.1 58 757 59.7 Tertiary education, short and medium1 30 402 63.0 34 586 59.8 Humanities and arts 2 398 63.1 2 942 62.3 Education 6 709 73.8 4 604 72.7 Social sciences and law 2 988 62.7 4 489 65.5 Business and administration 4 764 55.4 6 445 49.3 Natural sciences, vocational and technical subjects 4 099 25.5 5 691 29.4 Health, welfare and sport 7 977 82.7 8 521 80.4 Primary industries 121 48.8 298 55.7 Transport and communications, safety and security and other services 1 174 32.9 1 499 41.8 Unspecified field of study 172 55.2 97 54.6 Tertiary education, long2 13 169 57.8 22 352 60.2 Humanities and arts 1 310 60.1 1 688 64.6 Education 1 003 77.1 4 093 74.5 Social sciences and law 2 520 65.0 3 090 64.8 Business and administration 2 722 53.7 3 780 50.2 Natural sciences, vocational and technical subjects 3 134 37.0 5 478 40.2 Health, welfare and sport 2 165 76.1 3 748 80.6 Primary industries 130 59.2 150 54.7 Transport and communications, safety and security and other services 185 36.2 325 32.3 Unspecified field of study 0 . . . Doctoral studies3 1 442 49.4 1 819 54.5 Humanities and arts 137 57.7 141 63.8 Education 42 83.3 77 81.8 Social sciences and law 166 54.2 196 56.1 Business and administration 35 34.3 93 61.3 Natural sciences, vocational and technical subjects 575 34.6 724 39.9 Health, welfare and sport 476 61.6 556 66.7 Primary industries 0 . 16 62.5 Transport and communications, safety and security and other services 9 33.3 16 : Unspecified field of study 2 50.0 . . 1Including graduations from programmes 4 years or less but also 2 years or longer. 2Including graduations from programmes longer than 4 years. Awarded doctoral degrees are not included. 3Doctoral degrees Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Immigration category and field of education for graduations in higher educationDownload table as ...Immigration category and field of education for graduations in higher education
2023-2024 Total Immigrants Norwegian-born to immigrant parents Other population Per cent Total Immigrants Norwegian-born to immigrant parents Other population Total 58 757 8 002 2 520 48 235 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Humanities and arts 4 771 877 122 3 772 8.1 11.0 4.8 7.8 Education 8 774 825 385 7 564 14.9 10.3 15.3 15.7 Social sciences and law 7 775 936 340 6 499 13.2 11.7 13.5 13.5 Business and administration 10 318 1 182 483 8 653 17.6 14.8 19.2 17.9 Natural sciences, vocational and technical subjects 11 893 2 368 631 8 894 20.2 29.6 25.0 18.4 Health, welfare and sport 12 825 1 628 503 10 694 21.8 20.3 20.0 22.2 Primary industries 464 28 5 431 0.8 0.3 0.2 0.9 Transport and communications, safety and security and other services 1 840 149 48 1 643 3.1 1.9 1.9 3.4 Unspecified field of study 97 9 3 85 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.2 Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Age groups and level of degree for graduations in higher educationDownload table as ...Age groups and level of degree for graduations in higher education
2013-2014 2022-2023 2023-2024 Graduates Percentage women Graduates Percentage women Graduates Percentage women Level and age Total 45 013 61.1 58 442 59.9 58 757 59.7 Tertiary education, short and medium1 30 402 63.0 35 173 61.0 34 586 59.8 19-24 years 16 629 65.2 21 211 63.2 20 658 61.2 25-29 years 7 113 55.5 7 898 54.6 7 814 54.4 30-34 years 2 440 60.5 2 605 58.3 2 684 58.0 35-39 years 1 613 65.8 1 445 62.3 1 512 64.0 40-44 years 1 255 71.6 937 65.6 909 68.9 45-49 years 828 71.6 611 63.0 525 61.3 50-54 years 370 66.2 302 67.9 309 62.1 55-59 years 125 60.0 130 62.3 132 69.7 60 years or older 29 44.8 34 52.9 43 32.6 Tertiary education, long2 13 169 57.8 21 741 58.7 22 352 60.2 19-24 years 2 825 56.0 5 537 59.7 5 476 61.1 25-29 years 5 994 55.7 9 881 55.1 10 037 56.0 30-34 years 1 479 54.8 2 488 57.4 2 638 58.5 35-39 years 828 59.5 1 298 60.9 1 498 65.0 40-44 years 756 67.9 943 69.5 1 071 67.8 45-49 years 622 67.5 796 71.9 800 76.9 50-54 years 401 70.3 514 71.6 547 76.6 55-59 years 200 70.0 226 68.1 219 74.4 60 years or older 64 54.7 56 64.3 66 60.6 Second stage of tertiary education3 1 442 49.4 1 528 53.0 1 819 54.5 25-29 years 241 39.0 240 37.1 287 44.9 30-34 years 481 45.7 516 48.1 628 50.2 35-39 years 296 51.4 319 57.1 372 52.4 40-44 years 188 56.9 179 63.1 227 61.7 45-49 years 99 51.5 141 61.0 145 69.7 50-54 years 71 62.0 77 72.7 85 69.4 55-59 years 40 75.0 31 61.3 45 80.0 60 years or older 26 53.8 25 68.0 30 56.7 1Including graduations from programmes 4 years or less but also 2 years or longer. 2Including graduations from programmes longer than 4 years. Awarded doctoral degrees are not included. 3Doctoral degrees Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ... - Parents’ level of education and level of degree for graduations in higher educationDownload table as ...Parents’ level of education and level of degree for graduations in higher education
2013-2014 2022-2023 2023-2024 Total Total Total Level and parents´level of education Total 45 013 58 442 58 757 Tertiary education, 4 years or less1 30 402 35 173 34 586 Mother or father has long tertiary education 3 702 5 932 5 949 Mother or father has short tertiary education 10 713 13 863 13 755 Mother or father has upper secondary education 12 283 11 196 10 880 Mother or father has primary and lower secondary education 2 031 1 977 1 908 Not stated 1 673 2 205 2 094 Tertiary education, more than 4 years2 13 169 21 741 22 352 Mother or father has long tertiary education 2 688 4 778 4 869 Mother or father has short tertiary education 4 302 8 048 8 045 Mother or father has upper secondary education 3 525 5 366 5 638 Mother or father has primary and lower secondary education 525 711 772 Not stated 2 129 2 838 3 028 Doctoral studies3 1 442 1 528 1 819 Mother or father has long tertiary education 327 330 380 Mother or father has short tertiary education 345 326 384 Mother or father has upper secondary education 221 185 198 Mother or father has primary and lower secondary education 39 30 32 Not stated 510 657 825 1Including graduations from programmes 4 years or less but also 2 years or longer. 2Including graduations from programmes longer than 4 years. Awarded doctoral degrees are not included 3Doctoral degrees Explanation of symbolsDownload table as ...
About the statistics
The information under «About the statistics» was last updated 9 April 2025.
Completed education: A student is considered to have completed an education when the educational institution has issued a diploma or somehow approved that he/she has fulfilled the requirements for completing the education in question.
Credits points: Students are awarded with credits when they have met the requirements for passing a course.
Students: Students er registered students as of October 1st, as well as students who are awarded with credits in the course of a school year.
Academic year: A full academic year corresponds to 60 credits at universities and colleges in Norway.
Age: Estimated as of December 31.
Type of institution: According to the Standard Industrial Classification of 2007. The institutions are classified as Universities, Specialized University Institutions, and University Colleges, where University Colleges are again divided into three main groups: State University Colleges, Military Colleges and “other university colleges.”
Ownership: Educational institutions are classified as either public or private.
Educational activity: According to the Norwegian Standard Classification of Education (NUS2000). Programmes are classified according to their level and field of study. In tables of completed credits, field of study for the education where the student earned the most credits is used.
Highest educational attainment of parents: Parental educational attainment is divided into four categories: (1) Primary and lower secondary education, (2) Upper secondary education, (3) Higher education, short (at least two years, but also 4 years or less), and (4) Higher education, long (more than four years). Parental educational attainment is defined by that of the parents with the highest level of education. For example, if the parental educational attainment of a student is “(3) Higher education, short,” it implies that at least one of the parents has education at this level. Cases where there is no information on the level of education of any of the parents falls into the “Unspecified” group. See also the definitions of educational level.
Immigrants: Persons born abroad of two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents.
Norwegian-born to immigrant parents: Persons who are born in Norway of two parents born abroad, and in addition have four grandparents born abroad.
Country background: Constructed on the basis of information about the country of birth for three generations and refers to private, or mother's, or father's, or grandparents' foreign country of birth. For people born abroad this is (with few exceptions) their own native land. For people born in Norway this is their parents' country of birth. In cases where the parents have different countries of birth, the mother's country of birth is chosen.
Educational activities are grouped by the Norwegian Standard Classification of Education which was established in 1970 by Statistics Norway and later revised in 1973, 1989 and 2000. Educational institutions are classified as being higher education by the Standard Industrial Classification.
For international purposes, the ISCED 2011 is used (International Standard Classification of Education).
Name: Credits and graduations from higher education
Topic: Education
360 Division for Education and Culture Statistics
Figures are presented at national level, at municipal level and by educational institution. Data on enrolment in higher education include information that makes it possible to provide figures at other regional levels.
Figures are published annually in April. As of 2015, data on credit points was merged with data on graduations from univercsties and colleges. Prior to 2015, data on credit points was published separately.
The data is provided for UNESCO, OECD and Eurostat (U-O-E).
Statistics Norway stores all data in a proper, standardised manner in consultation with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.
Statistics Norway can deliver supplementary data and tables related to these statistics. To order supplementary data and tables, please contact Statistics Norway: oppdragutdanning@ssb.no. The price will depend on the size of the order.
There is a high demand for the collection of official statistics on education. Official education statistics are individual-based and document the educational activities of all Norwegian residents from completion of lower secondary school to completion of all higher education including doctoral/PhD studies.
Norway’s education statistics went through a structural readjustment in the beginning of the 1970s. All statistics on higher education were previously available through a census. The data is now individual-based, where all educational activities are attached to each individual’s personal ID-number. The data is contained in the National Education Database (NUDB), in a format that allows the production of different kinds of education statistics and alignment with other types of individual-based statistics where necessary (e.g. income, social-welfare).
The purpose of the statistics is to present individually based statistics of graduates and attained credit points in higher education in Norway.
Important users of the education statistics are the Ministry of Education and Research, public administration, researchers, special interest organisations, international organisations (Eurostat, OECD and UNESCO), media, business and industry. In addition, data is used internally in Statistics Norway in publications and in assignments.
No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8:00 AM. Prior to this, a minimum of three months’ advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.
Data from higher education is combined with data from lower and upper secondary education when revision processes are complete. Data is then stored as single annual files in the National Education Database (NUDB). Statistics Norway uses a similar system for all individually based statistics, making it easy to combine education statistics with other statistics. Labour market statistics, health statistics, living conditions statistics and income and wage statistics are examples of other individually based statistics compiled by Statistics Norway.
There are two areas of statistics in Statistics Norway (SSB) that include completed doctoral degrees: (1) Research and innovation, and in the statistics on research personnel, and (2) Education, and statistics on educational attainment of the population, statistics on credits and graduations from higher education and statistics on completion rates of students in higher education.
All these statistics are based on the reporting of doctoral degrees by educational institutions to the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir.). There are some differences in how the data is presented in these statistics. The various statistics in the education area are published according to the academic year, while the statistics on research personnel use the calendar year. Furthermore, the education-related statistics use the Norwegian Standard Classification of Education (NUS2000) to assign a field of study to completed doctoral degrees, whereas the statistics on research personnel assign each doctoral degree a discipline code based on the Norwegian classification of scientific disciplines (in Norwegian only) (hkdir.no).
Act of 21 June 2019 No. 32 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway § 10.
Commission Regulation (EU) No 88/2011 of 2 February 2011 implementing Regulation (EC) No 452/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the production and development of statistics on education and lifelong learning, as regards statistics on education and training systems.
The statistics on graduations and credits from higher education institutions include all completed degrees and credits attained during the period from October 1 to September 30. Completed degrees and credits attained from abroad are not included.
Only educational institutions classified by the Standard Industrial Classification as a higher education institution are included. Educational institutions are grouped as Universities, Specialised University Institutions and University Colleges.
In recent years, a number of institutions in higher education has been merged into larger units, see changes in educational institutions (in Norwegian).
As some University Colleges were merged in 2016 into larger units, there was a decrease in the number of students in University Colleges, as well as a corresponding increase in the number of students in Universities and in Specialized University Institutions.
Pursuant to the Statistical Act, Statistics Norway collects data on attained credit points and graduations from Database for Statistics on Higher Education (DBH) and the administrative systems of various higher education institutions. Information on completed doctoral degrees/PhD is included.
Surveys are not employed to collect education statistics.
Data collection: Pursuant to the Statistical Act (June 1989, No. 54), Statistics Norway collects student data from Database for Statistics on Higher Education (DBH).
Editing: Editing includes both control and revision and is performed on all educational data collected. It encompasses deletion of duplicate records, a control for correct and valid values for each variable, comparisons with last year’s data and checks for missing information. Several variables are re-coded to comply with control programs run by Statistics Norway. Personal ID-numbers are referenced against Statistics Norway’s population database to check for errors. At last, duplicate students are deleted, which implies that a student can only be counted once although the student may be registered for several educational activities or educational institutions at the same time.
Estimation: No estimation is performed. The statistics are based on data obtained from university and college databases.
Data is not released where there are less than three units within a single cell in a table if there is a risk of identification, i.e. the data can be traced back to an identifiable person.
Individual-based data on completed education has been published annually since it was first collected in the academic year 1973/74. Most variables are comparable, but some have changed. The Norwegian Standard Classification of Education (NUS2000) has been revised to secure comparability over time. While educational variables are reasonably comparable over time, other variables, e.g. various institution types, cannot be re-coded and thus are not comparable over time. Credit points variables are complete from the academic year 2004/05 onwards.
Statistical investigations may encounter various sources of error. The errors can occur either during data collection (in this case, during registration at the higher education institution) or during data processing (control and revision processes performed by Statistics Norway).
Overestimation of student numbers could occur for universities where registration occurs with payment of registration fees rather than enrolment in subjects. An overestimation of student numbers leads to an overestimation of the proportion of students who do not complete any credit points during the academic year. Students themselves can also provide inaccurate information to the registers.
Inaccuracies in graduation statistics may occur when administrative registers wrongly define a student as meeting the requirements for completing a degree. In some cases, the diploma could be issued later than the actual time of completion, which leads to the degree being registered at an inaccurate time.
Regarding the registration of credit points, there may be cases of institutions or study programs where credits are only registered when the entire program is completed. In this case, a student could be registered with zero credits in the first years and registered with total credits (for example 180 credits) in the last year.
See general principles for revisions in Statistics Norway.
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Analyses, articles and publications
Article / 28 March 2019More students want to become teachersThe number of students in teacher training and pedagogy programmes continues to increase. From 2017 to 2018, there was a particularly high increase in the number of students in primary and lower secondary teacher education.