Graduate-School Administrators Focus on Changing Demographics and Tight Budgets - Stacey Patton, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Hundreds of graduate-school deans and administrators attending the Council of Graduate Schools annual meeting have gathered here to grapple with how to bolster their programs in tough times. The job market for new Ph.D.'s is grim, money for graduate programs has been sharply curtailed, and, for the first time in seven years, the latest graduate enrollment data has shown a drop from year to year. Add growing public skepticism toward the value of advanced education and research to those downward trends, and it's easy to understand the crowd's sense of urgency. "These are hard times," Debra W. Stewart, the group's president, told the audience at the opening dinner.