Graduate Education Updates

Enhancing Graduate Education at CU Denver

CU Denver educates more than 4,000 graduate students across more than 75 CU Denver graduate programs. So it’s crucial that CU Denver provides excellent student experiences, promotes affordability and research productivity, and supports career success. We can do this best when CU Denver’s graduate education administration is efficient, consistent, and supportive of each program’s unique strengths.

This is why CU Denver has been reviewing aspects of its graduate education operations, most recently through a March 2026 report with recommendations for: 

1. Academic and administrative policies that provide baseline guidance for all graduate programs, while allowing flexibility for programs to apply tailored academic standards. 
2. Administrative structures such as a new central Graduate Studies Office (to open in fall 2026), a Graduate Council with revised scope, and updated graduate faculty appointment rules and procedures.
3. A tuition remission policy that will defray costs for graduate students with qualifying academic assistantships starting in 2027.

Provost Karen Marrongelle supports the implementation of these recommendations, pending refinements by affected stakeholder groups (such as Graduate Council) before implementation. 

Important implementation updates will be published on this page throughout 2026.

Upcoming Engagement

To ensure these recommendations reflect our collective community wisdom, Graduate Education Working Group leaders are soliciting feedback this spring and meeting with affected stakeholder groups across the CU Denver community.   

As opportunities for input take shape this semester, you now may share feedback or ask questions on the report, recommendations, and implementation process.

Background

Until 2022, many (but not all) CU Denver graduate programs were administered through a Graduate School shared with CU Anschutz graduate programs. In 2022, CU Denver exited that dual-campus graduate school and transitioned to a new model to serve CU Denver students exclusively. Since 2022, many graduate education functions have been managed locally, whereas other functions have been managed by a central Office of Graduate Education, with a faculty Graduate Council advising the provost on matters of significance.

Gaps in policy and process clarity and coordination, along with insufficient funding, have impeded the overall competitiveness of CU Denver graduate education programs and operations. To gain further insight and context on the state of play for CU Denver graduate education, in spring 2025 the university engaged Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) consultants to review operations and make recommendations for CU Denver graduate education going forward.

Since April 2025, CU Denver has engaged in extensive internal dialogue and exploration to address recommendations in the CGS report and optimize conditions for CU Denver graduate education. Most notable among these activities has been a Fall 2025 working group that addressed three key questions raised by the CGS report, through recommendations published on March 2, 2026 in the group’s final report.