Founded in 1900, the University of Iowa Graduate College has a proud 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).

Today, the 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 oversees 12 departments and programs, providing an academic home for groundbreaking interdisciplinary work across the UI campus. 

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.