Controlling Costs and Optimizing the Value of Graduate Degrees

Graduate degrees can be portals to meaningful, well-paying careers for those who hold them, and graduate-educated workers are critical to a competitive contemporary workforce. At the current moment, however, graduate education is threatened by rising costs, which impact continued access to and success in both master’s and Ph.D. education for all current and prospective students with the ability, curiosity, and motivation to pursue them. A central challenge that our country faces today is how to use finite resources to optimize the balance between access, affordability, program quality, and student success.

For this reason, in October 2023, CGS formed the Cost of Graduate Education (CGE) taskforce to study this complex issue. This report and accompanying toolkit build on the extensive experience of taskforce members, who, as graduate deans, are working daily to address these issues. The work of the taskforce was grounded in the vision of providing affordable access to the high-quality graduate education that our students deserve and that our nation needs.