Montana State's graduate division offering 60 master's and 28 doctoral programs across eight colleges.
The Graduate School offers 60 master's degree options, 28 doctoral degree options (including three Education Specialist degrees), and numerous certificate programs across eight MSU colleges: Agriculture, Arts and Architecture, Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Education, Health and Human Development, Engineering, Letters and Science, and Nursing. Most graduate programs require original research culminating in a thesis, professional paper, or dissertation, though some professionally oriented master's degrees are coursework-only.
Montana State University is classified by Carnegie as an R1: Doctoral University with very high research activity. During 2019-2020, the university recorded $167 million in research expenditures, with the College of Agriculture leading at $44 million, followed by Engineering at nearly $20 million and Letters and Sciences at $18.5 million. Graduate Research Assistants conduct a significant portion of research under faculty supervision in areas relevant to their studies.
MSU awarded its first master's degree in 1902 (botany) and first doctoral degrees in 1956 (chemical engineering and chemistry). The Graduate Division was created in 1948 and underwent several name changes—to College of Graduate Studies, Division of Graduate Education, and finally The Graduate School in 2010. Notable growth occurred in the 1950s-1960s and again from the mid-1990s onward, expanding from 38 master's and 12 doctoral programs to the current 60 and 28 respectively.
All graduate students completing a thesis or dissertation must submit an electronic version archived through ScholarWorks, an open-access repository. In 2015, MSU Library digitized over 5,000 theses and dissertations, making research from virtually every graduate student since 1902 publicly available online. The collection now includes over 7,500 items.