Graduate Funding Resources

Prospective students are often concerned with how to fund their graduate studies. Many options are available, including assistantships, grants, loans, and employment on campus. Information about these options is available on the Graduate Division's Financial Support webpage. Opportunities in the department are detailed below.  

Funding at the Doctoral Level

The Department of Criminology, Law and Society offers multi-year Graduate Research or Teaching Assistantships to doctoral applicants on a competitive basis. All applicants to the doctoral program who intend to pursue full-time study are considered for funding.

Advanced doctoral students regularly apply for nationally-competitive fellowships from organizations like the National Institute of Justice or the National Science Foundation or for dissertation completion awards from Mason's Graduate Division. Some PhD students attend school part-time while working at Mason or elsewhere. The department also provides professional development scholarships to support doctoral student travel to research conferences and training workshops.

Funding at the Masters Level

Department-sponsored funding is limited to doctoral students. However, individual faculty members occasionally hire MA or MS students to assist with their research. Most master's students in our program work full- or part-time while attending Mason.