Graduate education in the USA

Graduate education in the USA is regarded as a success story, with well‐structured training and increasing student numbers. Students obtain postgraduate qualifications to improve their credentials and because they wish to learn more about a specific discipline. However, the emphasis on graduate education is blamed for having a detrimental effect on undergraduate programmes, and has come under financial pressures. There is public criticism of the training of America's international competitors in graduate schools and concern in the academic community over attrition rates and length of time taken to complete doctorates. Graduate education, therefore, faces challenges in the 1990s.