Diversification or Specialization? The Key to Growing Graduate Programming

By Terry Rawls - EvoLLLution. A key evolutionary artifact in graduate education today is the fact that the baby boom generation is aging out of the educational system. Baby boomers fueled the growth of American higher education in the 1960s, first as they sought undergraduate degrees and then across the next four decades as they sought to complete that long-ago unfinished undergraduate program or secure a master’s degree for their next promotion. While there are echoes of this generation, spikes in the pipeline so to speak, the simple truth is that our population is plateauing. That’s a trend that will continue for some time to come, and it does not bode well for graduate education going forward. More...