The Future of Graduate Education

Navigating the shifting landscape

Graduate education has enjoyed a jump in enrollment over the past five years, weathering the effects of a pandemic and a rapidly shifting sociopolitical landscape in the United States. 

Look beneath the surface, though, and you'll see a host of challenges: The master’s-degree market might be booming, but it also faces oversaturation. Postgraduate certificate programs are on the rise, but so are questions from employers on their quality and what skills they’re teaching students. Meanwhile, doctoral education is facing intensifying calls for reform amid long-standing structural rifts and a historic wave of graduate-student labor organizing.

This Chronicle report examines the state of graduate education, and the opportunities — and pitfalls — that program administrators must navigate.

Purchase this report to:

• Examine threats to enrollment, from shifting trends in international-student enrollment to the approaching demographic cliff.
• Understand the importance of differentiation for master’s programs.
• Learn the advantages of certificate programs, which can be easier and less costly to establish but still present hazards.
• Gain knowledge of recent efforts to reinvent the Ph.D. and what those leading such efforts have learned.

Date: July 2024
Pages: 60
Digital file size: 45.6 MB

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