Graduation Rates for Graduate School Deserve Attention

Graduate school is an increasingly common education choice, with the number of U.S. adults with a graduate degree doubling over the last two decades. Yet very little is known about the outcomes of students who start a graduate program and, in particular, how many do not ultimately complete a graduate degree or credential. In this brief we summarize new research that uses administrative data from Texas to establish several facts about graduate school graduation rates:

• Many graduate program entrants do not complete. On average, 62 percent of students who started a graduate program in the 2003–04 through 2012–3 entry cohorts earned a degree within 6 years of entry. Completion rates for graduate students are comparable to the 6-year completion rate for students entering bachelor’s degree programs over this same time period.

• Graduate program completion rates grew steadily over time. The growth in graduate program completion rates occurred at the same time that the number of individuals entering graduate programs was also increasing and runs counter to decreases that might be expected if the growth in enrollment came from marginally less prepared students.

• Graduate program graduation rates differ significantly depending on field of study. For example, law programs exhibit high completion rates, with 81 percent of entrants earning a degree. In contrast, education programs have considerably lower rates, with only 53 percent of entrants completing. That said, there is still substantial overlap in completion rates across fields of study.

• The type of institution a student attends also is very predictive of graduate students’ likelihood of completion. Flagship public universities in Texas demonstrate the highest 6-year graduation rate, with an average of 72 percent of graduate program entrants completing.

• Students who complete a graduate program typically have more student loan debt, but in some fields of study non-completers also accumulate substantial debt.

For undergraduate education, policymakers have shifted their focus from college access to completion, spawning efforts by institutions and states to increase undergraduate graduation rates. Similar attention has not been paid to graduate student noncompletion.

A key barrier is a lack of systematic national data on graduate program completion rates. Higher education institutions are required to report graduation rates for undergraduate students to the federal government and, in many cases, state governments, but similar reporting is not required for graduate students.

Although there is less evidence on the returns to completing a graduate program relative to accumulating some graduate education and stopping out, in Texas, we find that graduate program completers generally have higher earnings and larger earnings gains (relative to pre-graduate school enrollment earnings) than non-completers, with some exceptions. And although graduate non-completers still tend to earn more than undergraduate dropouts, they also accumulate substantially higher debt, underscoring the importance of tracking loan repayment outcomes for both graduate degree recipients and non-completers.