Founded in 1900, the University of Iowa (UI) Graduate College manages the enrollment and degree progress for nearly 5,000 students from over 100 graduate programs in 10 different colleges which span the Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Health Sciences, Engineering, Education, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, and Business.

The Graduate College has a history of innovation, which serves as a strong foundation for our contemporary initiatives in graduate education. The UI was among the first universities to offer MFA and DMA degrees, to accept and foster interdisciplinary research by faculty and students, and to embrace professional degrees at the doctoral level (DPT, DNP, and AUD).

The mission of the UI Graduate College is to foster an intellectual environment conducive to exemplary research, scholarship, and creativity among graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty. The College makes every effort to ensure that the graduate programs offered by the University are of high quality and stimulate the creation of new knowledge and information, and that these efforts simultaneously benefit both graduate and undergraduate student learning. The Graduate College serves as an advocate for graduate education, allocates resources that support graduate students and programs, manages policies and procedures to establish and assess graduate programs, and fosters interdisciplinary programs.

The Graduate College promotes excellence in the academic community with 11 graduate programs ranked among the top 10 best programs in the nation (U.S. News and World Report, 2019). The UI Graduate College leads the nation’s public institutions in high-quality dissertations, with five winners and 15 finalists in the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS/UMI) Distinguished Dissertation Award competition.

The Graduate College also undergoes periodic review by the Office of the Provost and conducts periodic review of graduate programs, ensuring high quality programs that continue to prepare students to become part of the highly skilled workforce needed to solve the complex social and economic problems locally, nationally, and globally in the 21^st century.