By Alexandra Brewer | Arts & Life Writer
For many college students, graduation used to mean one thing: getting a job. Graduate school enrollment at Baylor has continued to rise, including a more than 50% increase at Baylor since 2019. For a growing number, graduation means staying in school.
At Baylor, graduate school has become less of a niche path and more of a common next step. For some students, it’s about specialization and curiosity. For others, it’s about licensing requirements and job security.
According to the 2025 Graduate School Annual Report, that shift is visible in enrollment trends. According to the 2023 report, since 2019, PhD enrollment has increased by about 30%, part of a broader expansion in graduate education across the university.
During that same period, the university has invested more heavily in graduate recruiting, funding and program expansion, contributing to a larger and more diverse graduate student population.
Baylor officials have also pointed to the over 50% increase in total graduate enrollment since 2019, reflecting both professional master’s programs and doctoral growth across disciplines.
Baton Rouge, La., PhD student James Usher is a first-year in the electrical and computer engineering department. Usher didn’t always plan to continue past his bachelor’s degree. That changed when he got involved in research with his current adviser during his undergraduate years.
“I got involved in his lab and was able to get put on a really interesting project,” Usher said. “From there, that’s how I knew I wanted to pursue graduate school.”
Grad school wasn’t something Usher felt pressured into. Instead, it grew out of curiosity about how things work, especially in a field like electrical engineering.
That sense of direction doesn’t come without trade-offs, as Usher realized that a bachelor’s degree alone is still valuable in engineering, even if many students choose to continue.
“You can absolutely enter the workforce immediately and get paid twice or three times what I’m making right now as a grad student,” Usher said. “But you have to weigh the pros and cons.”
For Usher, the trade-off is specialization. A PhD, he explained, narrows your focus but deepens your expertise. It shifts you from implementing solutions to creating them.
“That’s the whole point of the PhD,” Usher said, “to learn how to be a master problem solver in situations that may or may not have fixed guidelines.”
Not every graduate student follows that same path of curiosity or research-driven interest.
For Little Rock, Ark., grad student Luke Shroyer, a master’s in accounting wasn’t optional in the same way, but rather was built into the profession.
“For a CPA license, you need 150 credit hours in order to get your license,” Shroyer said. “So it’s often viewed as more efficient to do the fifth year and get those extra hours.”
In his case, grad school is less about exploring a subject and more about completing a requirement that leads directly to certification and employment. While he acknowledged that some people question whether a master’s degree is necessary in today’s job market, he sees it as part of a shifting set of expectations.
“30 years ago, when our parents were in school, it was ‘Oh, you should go to college, get a degree,’” Shroyer said. “Now it’s, ‘Oh, you should get your master’s.”
Still, Shroyer doesn’t view grad school as universally necessary.
“You can’t solely look at it as ‘I need this,’” Shroyer said. “There are a lot of factors that go into making that decision.”
Despite their different fields and motivations, both students end up in similar places, just through different timelines.
Accounting students without a master’s typically need more work experience to qualify for certification, while those like Shroyer complete that requirement through additional schooling.
Usher said the path in engineering is less structured but still increasingly competitive at higher levels. In both cases, graduate school can serve as an advantage or an expectation, depending on the direction a student chooses.
“I think the vast majority of people still get their bachelor’s and leave, and for most people, that’s probably the right choice,” Usher said.
Shroyer offered a different perspective, noting that the trend may be shifting.
“I don’t know if that’s like workplace demand or what, but I think that it’s certainly becoming more of, ‘Hey, you should start considering that fifth year,’” Shroyer said.
