According to the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 297,200 individuals achieved their first higher education degree in Germany in the 2023 academic year, accounting for 32 percent of the corresponding population.
The proportion of first-time graduates among women was significantly higher at 36 percent, compared to 28 percent among men. The majority of first-time graduates were young people between the ages of 21 and 29 and the majority of their first degrees were bachelor’s degrees, at 86 percent.
In 2022, there were 301,300 first-time graduates, with a first-time graduate rate of 32 percent. The slight decrease in the number of first-time graduates between 2022 and 2023 did not impact the first-time graduate rate due to the recalculation of the population figure based on the 2022 census. This new population figure, which showed a decrease of around 1.4 million people, resulted in a higher first-time graduate rate. If the rate for 2023 had been calculated based on the previous population forecast from the 2011 census, the result would have been a rate of 31 percent, slightly lower than in 2022.
Over the past 20 years, the first-time graduate rate has increased by a factor of 1.7, from 18 percent in 2003. The majority of this increase occurred by 2012, with the rate remaining relatively stable between 31 and 32 percent from 2013 to 2022, except for a slight dip in 2020 and a peak in 2021 due to the pandemic’s impact on academic years.
The conversion of absolute numbers in the higher education statistics to the age-specific population facilitates not only time comparisons but also regional comparisons. Among the German states, Berlin had the highest first-time graduate rate of 51 percent, while Brandenburg had the lowest rate of 23 percent. However, it is essential to consider that many of the first-time graduates in Berlin may actually reside in Brandenburg. In general, the city-states with their diverse higher education landscape benefit from the influx of students from the surrounding areas. The first-time graduate rate in the city-states was 41 percent in 2023, compared to 31 percent in the state-level regions, according to the Federal Statistical Office.