While there may be no signs that a tepid U.S. economy is abating this fall, enrollment in law schools and other graduate programs across the country are booming. Graduate enrollment in the U.S. reached over 3.1 million students this past spring, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, surpassing pre-pandemic levels by 7.2 percent. Some 4.5 percent of those are enrolled in law schools.
This trend is not new, says Ray Perryman, PhD, President and CEO of the Perryman Group, an economic research and analysis firm based in Waco, Texas. “We also saw it during the 2008 economic crisis,” Perryman said. “When uncertainty or an economic slowdown is affecting opportunities, the relative attractiveness of an additional degree increases.”
“The economy is normally a factor when it comes to graduate enrollment,” said Christopher Rios, PhD, Associate Dean for Enrollment Management at Baylor University. When the job market is down, he notes, those already in the workforce who lose jobs or struggle to advance in their careers often see graduate school as a way to enhance their resume. “At the same time,” he added, “many recent bachelor’s graduates see grad school as a good place to weather the storm.”
Unemployment for U.S. college grads between ages 20 and 24 is at more than a 10-year high, according to the Wall Street Journal, which also reported that entry-level hiring is down 17 percent since April 2019, and employers are increasingly demanding 3 to 5 years of experience for jobs that new graduates used to get. A recent report from Student Housing Insights found that unemployment for recent graduates nationally is 5.8 percent and “underemployment” is at over 41 percent, which is why many are choosing to wait out the job market by entering master’s or PhD programs.
Another factor that makes graduate school attractive is that it’s a good investment, said Perryman. Graduates with advanced degrees in health, business, and law are not having the same problems as other undergraduates when it comes to finding jobs, he noted. Baylor Law has proved exceedingly successful on that front this year, according to a Reuters analysis of data released in 2025 by the American Bar Association. Baylor Law achieved the third-highest employment rate in the nation for its 2024 graduating class. Some 94-95 percent of Baylor Law’s juris doctor graduates secured full-time, bar-passage-required positions within ten months of graduation. Baylor came in just behind Cornell Law School, which had a job fulfillment rate of 96.43 percent, and the first place, Duke, which had a 97.83 percent rate.
Baylor Law School graduates have long been recognized as practice-ready, and that reputation continues to resonate strongly with employers. “While the national legal market is currently absorbing new graduates at an exceptional rate, we are also seeing sustained demand for experienced talent in our region,” said Jeremy Counsellor, Dean of Baylor Law School. “Employers consistently seek out Baylor Law School graduates for their rigorous training, practical skills, and ability to contribute immediately in professional settings.”
Applications to Baylor Law School for Fall 2025 have increased by nearly 40 percent year over year, and the applicants’ academic credentials have also improved.
Besides an uncertain job market, Dean Counseller offers an additional explanation for the drive in applications. “The recent change in LSAT format may have prompted some students to apply sooner than they otherwise would have,” he said.
Despite the increase in applications, Baylor Law is not expanding its overall enrollment beyond current levels. “We want to maintain our low student-to-faculty ratio and the collaborative, student-centered environment that defines Baylor Law School,” Counseller said.
In other news for law schools around the country, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action in college admissions, racial and ethnic diversity among law school students remained stable in 2024, with the percentages of Black, Hispanic, and Asian first-year juris doctor students nearly the same or slightly improved compared to 2023.
Another reason for the grad school surge, Perryman explained, is because of the way AI is impacting jobs. “It’s a nuance that didn’t exist in 2008,” he noted. “In 2025, we are seeing people who want to level up their skills to deal with the dramatic changes coming for some occupations.”
Current estimates indicate that as many as one in four jobs could be impacted by generative AI, Perryman said. “This strongly suggests that adaptability and continuous ‘upskilling’ will be absolutely critical,” he continued, “and schools should be preparing students with this inevitable evolution in mind.”
Consultant Mary Landon Darden, President of Higher Education Innovation, LLC agrees. “We are seeing a shift into programs that offer higher education certificates that don’t require a traditional graduate education. Sometimes employers want to keep the employee but want their skills in certain areas to be enhanced—and that is attractive to the student. A certificate program can be more user-friendly than a traditional graduate education.”
In that respect, the Baylor Graduate School, where enrollment is up this year, Rios said, Baylor is on course: “The fastest growth area over the past five years has been in our professional, online, and hybrid programs specifically designed to meet the needs of working professionals.” Baylor is also beginning to offer graduate certificates based on credit-bearing graduate courses that give specialized education training in ten distinct areas, including Business Analytics, Cybersecurity, Learning Design and Technology, and RF/Microwave Engineering.
“Every major technological revolution in human history, dating back to the wheel, about 5,5000 years ago, has ultimately created more jobs than it displaced,” noted Perryman, “but it also made some skills obsolete along the way.”
For example, he points out that while some legal firms may increasingly use AI for certain tasks, including contract analysis, e-discovery, and legal research, AI-related fields requiring legal expertise are simultaneously emerging, for example around data privacy, cybersecurity, the environmental impact of data centers, copyright law, and AI regulation.
Looking ahead, Baylor’s Christopher Rios notes, nobody knows if this surge in grad school enrollment will continue. Analysts predict that falling birth rates after the 2008 economic crisis have precipitated a potential steep decline in undergraduate applications starting this year, known as the “demographic cliff.”
“It’s just hitting colleges now,” he noted. “We’re all waiting to see how the demographic cliff may affect graduate enrollment. My guess is that the growing need for advanced degrees in the professions will mitigate the kind of headwinds undergraduate enrollment is facing.”
And the demographic cliff may not be an issue in every college. “From the reports I’m seeing, enrollment in graduate and undergraduate programs is way up for HBCUs and traditionally women’s colleges,” said Darden. Her explanation is simple: “Why would any student want to go to a college where they will be discriminated against,” she said, pointing to President Trump signing executive orders against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and his record of putting women’s health in danger.
“On June 27 of this year, the president at the University of Virginia, James E. Ryan, was forced to resign under pressure from the Trump administration’s Justice Department because of the university’s DEI efforts,” Darden said. “It’s monstrous. To me, it makes perfect sense that wherever you start legalizing racism, people who are impacted are going to avoid those places.”
Rios and Darden are concerned about other changes in federal policy that may impact enrollment. “Reductions in research funding and student visas will have a large and immediate effect,” Rios explained. “Many research universities have already begun shrinking their incoming classes. And the recently unveiled efforts to end the federal GradPLUS loans could have a devastating effect—either by limiting the range of people able to afford graduate school or by exacerbating the existing student-debt crisis.”
“Federal partisan meddling in programs like the Public Service Loan Programs (PSLP) will not only impact enrollment but, ultimately, society,” posed Darden. “The PSLP has made law school more affordable for public interest lawyers who want to get into legal aid, public defense, and non-profit work,” she said. “As of March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Department of Education to exclude participation by non-profits that he doesn’t agree with—those that work for women’s health or immigrant rights, for example.
It’s outrageous. It’s flatly unconstitutional. And that’s just one.”
Looking ahead, Darden says her mission is nothing less than transforming higher education. “Fifty percent of college courses were already online before Covid,” she noted. Only 15 percent of prospective college students will be in the traditional 18 to 24 age range, she added. “Eighty-five percent of undergrad and graduate students in the future will be non-traditional.
We can probably make up for the enrollment demographic cliff—we just have to be proactive, not reactive.
“Those of us in higher education need to be curators now,” she continued, “and look at industry and technology as partners, and offer STEM programs along with how government should work, and have students also understand subjects like environmental protection law and how it all fits together. Our students are global now, and include working professionals, retired boomers, and folks switching careers, as well as teenagers. It’s a new world.”
