After spending a half-dozen years in California, David Webb returned to St. Louis earlier this year to pursue something different.

A St. Louis University graduate, Webb had invested 13 years of his life in information technology but sensed something was missing: "I was stagnating. I felt like I wasn't making a difference in my life or anybody else's life."

So this summer, he started work on a master's degree in sustainability, a new degree being offered by his alma mater — one of nearly three dozen new programs introduced at SLU in the past five years.

Webb, 36, and so many others are flocking to graduate schools here and across the nation. Some are looking for a midlife career change. Some want to boost job credentials. Others simply need a place of refuge while the economy straightens itself out.

In the last year alone, enrollment at graduate schools nationally increased 4.7 percent, with applications to grad schools rising even more quickly, at 8.3 percent, according to a report last month by Council of Graduate Schools.

It's a surge that's been steady for several years, with the strongest growth in business, health sciences and education, said Nathan Bell, the council's research director.

Bell and others say the economy plays a key role in that growth, with many recent graduates choosing grad school over unemployment. But also there's a gradual creeping of job requirements that's been under way for decades. No longer is it enough to just graduate from college.

"The job you could get with a bachelor's degree 20 years ago now requires a master's degree for entrance," Bell said.

The national trend in rising grad school enrollment is reflected locally.

From 2004 to 2009, Missouri's public institutions saw attendance in master's programs grow to 16,200 from 12,800, according to the Missouri Department of Higher Education. And in Illinois during the same time frame, master's enrollment across all schools surged to more than 105,000 from 83,600, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

Some schools have responded to the demand with new degree offerings, such as the new master's in sustainability at St. Louis University. The school's aggressive push in master's offerings — five years ago, the school offered 56 master's degrees, but it now has 88 — has been driven from two directions.

The first is a desire on the part of administrators to increase the university's research output, something that can be accomplished by an army of new grad students. But also, the school looked at the troubled economy and figured undergraduate enrollment at the pricey school might suffer.

"We may have a challenge getting our undergraduate population. So we should try to build our graduate population," said Manoj Pantankar, vice president of the university's Frost campus. "That's what we were trying to balance."

Traditional institutions also are facing increased pressure from the for-profit college sector, whose schools have been aggressive with new programs and online offerings. That has forced their competitors to take a hard look at the market.

That's the case at Webster University, where master's offerings have risen 25 percent in the past five years. Some of that growth is simply responding to competition, said Julian Schuster, Webster's provost.

"They force other institutions to be more nimble and to meet student demands," Schuster said of the for profits.

Not every school, however, has the option of adding new degree programs. State schools, in particular, face greater obstacles than those standing in front of private or for-profit schools.

The University of Missouri-St. Louis, for example, has experienced strong growth in terms of students seeking master's degrees, with enrollment rising to 2,527 last year from 2,138 in 2004, according to the higher education department.

Yet during that time, the school has kept its degree offerings steady at 30. A new program would have to go through a rigorous series of approvals, starting at the university level. It would then move to the UM system and finally the state Department of Higher Education. Along the way, it would have to be backed by a careful market analysis demonstrating demand and proof that the program would pay for itself, said Judith Walker de Felix, UMSL's associate provost for academic affairs and graduate school dean.

The approval process is less cumbersome at schools such as Webster, where Walker de Felix worked before moving to UMSL.

"It's just a different environment," said Walker de Felix, who told of being at Webster after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the school quickly started a new security-oriented master's program. "They can hone in on special fields that are sort of the hot topic of the day."

But even at schools where growth in programs appears to be stagnant, that doesn't mean change isn't a constant part of the landscape.

Such is the case at Washington University, where the number of master's degree programs has remained unchanged over the past five years. Still, programs have come and gone, said Robert Wiltenburg, dean of the school's university college.

Wiltenburg said master's programs historically represent one of the ways a university can be creative with its curriculum. Programs can be tossed together, often drawing upon resources from unrelated departments scattered across campus.

And there are instances in which programs are spawned from a perceived need. That's what prompted the introduction four years ago of a new master's in nonprofit management.

"Sometimes it comes from student demand," Wiltenburg said. "If you have people asking for it again and again, then you find a way to make it happen."