About the Survey

About gradSERU

The gradSERU Survey is a comprehensive, longitudinal study initiated by the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) and the University of Minnesota’s Office of Institutional Research to help answer questions about the potential relationship between graduate education experiences, program characteristics, and development outcomes of Masters and doctoral students at the leading research universities across the globe.

The intention of gradSERU is to examine how differences in the graduate/professional education experiences of students relate to their intellectual, emotional, ethical, professional, and psychosocial development.

The initial design was for doctoral students, but the survey instrument has been updated to include masters and professional students. gradSERU is characterized by a modular design that allows institutions to administer a common Core Survey that is administered across institutions and a subset of modules that institutions can select from to administer based on interest or need. Learn more about the survey design

View a list of participating institutions

Conceptual Framework

The Stages and Domains of the Graduate Student Experience

Grounded in the tenets of Tinto’s (1993) “theory of graduate communities and doctoral persistence”, the gradSERU Survey conceptualizes the graduate student experience as a three-stage process that encompasses the entry/transition stage, the development stage, and the degree completion/exit stage.

The theory posits that individual attributes, such as demographics, prior educational experience, and financial resources, shape students’ goals and their educational, occupational, and institutional commitments. External commitments and financial resources also impact the process of students’ integration into the academic and social systems of their program, department, and university.

Entry/Transition ⇒ Development ⇒ Completion/Exit

During the entry/transition stage, graduate and professional students seek to build relationships in the academic and social communities of the university, which includes both formal and informal interactions with faculty and peers inside and outside of the classroom and in their graduate positions.

In the development stage, graduate students acquire the knowledge and develop the competences needed either to engage in dissertation/thesis research for doctoral and research master’s students or to pass certification/licensure exams for professional students. At this stage, graduate and professional students are integrated within the academic and social systems of the program/department and start seeking opportunities for professional development.

The final stage is the completion/exit stage where students complete their research and defend their dissertation/thesis. In the final stage, relationship with dissertation adviser and/or with the dissertation/thesis committee members became salient. As in the previous two stages, external commitments and financial support continue to play a very important role in the graduate and professional student experience at this stage.

Graduate Student Experience

SERU conceptualizes the graduate student experience as encompassing six domains that reflect the complexity of graduate and professional education during the three stages of graduate student persistence. These domains include:

• Curricular Experiences
• Research Experiences
• Teaching Experiences & Professional Development
• Cocurricular Experiences
• Social Life & Conditions
• Personal Life & Conditions

Universities and their various disciplines and professional fields will vary tremendously on what components influence the student experience. For example, cocurricular experiences and public and community service are not always associated with graduate education; yet, degree programs in medicine, social welfare, and law often have significant components related to public service; and STEM fields also can have robust cocurricular activity and forms of social networking. Student research and teaching experiences will differ depending on the type of assistantship they have.

Students in research positions will probably have either limited or no teaching experience, whereas students in teaching positions will still have research experience while doing their dissertation research. Therefore, the impact of each of the five domains on graduate and professional student experience will vary based on institutional, field, program, and degree characteristics as well as personal circumstances.

gradSERU Concept Map

The gradSERU instrument has been developed to reflect each of the five domains of the graduate student experience in a flexible manner for institutions to customize to the graduate population they wish to target, including:

• Doctoral Education
• Master’s Programs – Professional
• Master’s Programs – Research (largely non-terminal)

Reflecting this holistic approach to understanding the student experience, the following provides a Conceptual Map of GradSERU grouped around four general areas: Attributes of Students, Entry Orientations, the Student Experience, and Outcomes.