By Sharron Hannon
Graduate enrollment--currently at 18 percent of UGA’s total enrollment--needs to increase in the coming decade if the university is to be competitive with other major public research institutions, according to Gordhan Patel, dean of the Graduate School.
Joined by Wyatt Anderson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Russell Yeany, dean of the College of Education, Patel provided statistics and information about the university’s graduate programs at the third in a series of weekly briefings for the institutional Strategic Planning Advisory Group.
“If the university aspires to be among the top public research universities in the country, what gets us there is research and graduate education,” Patel told the group.
The university’s current graduate enrollment is somewhat low compared to other schools in the SEC, Big Ten schools and other peer institutions, where the enrollment percentage is typically above 21 percent, he said. UGA’s graduate enrollment has hovered at 18 percent over the past 30 years, he noted.
“Graduate education is an expensive enterprise,” Patel said. “We need a lot more non-state money for scholarships for graduate students.”
Patel said UGA’s assistantship rates are fairly competitive, but the university sometimes loses out by not having “add-ons” to attract the best students.
Anderson and Yeany both emphasized that the quality of graduate programs--built on the quality of the faculty--is a key factor in attracting top graduate students.
“The quality of programs attracts students and faculty,” said Yeany. “For the College of Education, it’s a rare case where money makes a difference in a person’s decision to come to UGA. Where money does come in is in the number of assistantships we can offer. We run out of money before we run out of qualified candidates.”
The College of Education, Yeany noted, accounts for the largest total number and largest percentage of graduate students at UGA. Graduate enrollment is 40 percent of the college’s total enrollment, he said, “and that number could go higher and should.”
As the university crafts its strategic plan, decisions must be made about where growth in graduate enrollment should come, said Patel.
“We hear about the overproduction of Ph.D.s, but that’s not across the board,” he said.
Patel also noted that at UGA and elsewhere a coming wave of faculty retirements will change the hiring picture.
There’s a market for graduate degrees in the humanities, asserted Anderson, which includes students actually wanting to pursue careers in other fields. Another untapped market, Anderson feels, is students wanting to combine bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
“We need to make it easier for them to do that,” he said.
All three deans agreed that the university needs to give more consideration to non-traditional programs for students who can’t afford to come to Athens for three or four years. One way to do that is to take greater advantage of distanceeducation programs, they said.
“The College of Education can take programs to schools online or deliver instruction to the workplace,” said Yeany. “We need to learn how to do that better.”
The university should also give more consideration to non-degree graduate programs, according to the three deans. “Some people just want coursework to increase their competence,” said Yeany. “We should be able to offer certificate programs in growing numbers.”
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