Abstract
Graduate education in general means nurturing scholars who are capable of research that adds to the 'body of knowledge' and educators in the higher education system. Therefore 'discovering' new knowledge has always been a major role of graduate schools. However, interior design is a special field that 'application' can also produce new knowledge and therefore a wider understanding of scholarship is needed especially in the graduate level education. The purpose of this paper is to understand Interior Design graduate education system in the United States in order to develop issues that need to be discusses and addressed in Korea. Therefore, this paper first examines meanings of graduate degrees in general and current situation of Interior degrees offered in Korea. Then investigates the different types of graduate degrees in the U.S. such as post-professional degrees, first-professional degrees, and differences in general degree(M.A., M.S.) and professional degrees (M.F.A., M.I.D.). The researcher has used websites of each school and information lists of degrees offered by KIID and IDEC that serves as the main educators council in each countries. The characteristics of graduate degrees in America can be described as a structured system based on variety, flexibility, and distinction. For instance, M.F.A means a professional degree that is focused on building theory based project abilities, longer period to study but counted as a terminal in the field. However, in Korea even though the title of the degrees may differ there is not much difference shown in the educational contents. Therefore issues such as developing a more universal and international degree system, flexible and selective educational road-map, mutual understanding and unified system between various organizations for better graduate education system are proposed. Moreover, hope to start a discourse on defining scholarship and professionalism in the field of Interior Design.