After more than 30 years of development, professional degree graduate education in China has become an important component of graduate education, and has formed a unique research field in the academic community. Excel and CiteSpace software were used to conduct quantitative and visual analysis of 3 431 core journal articles related to professional degree graduate education research in the CNKI database. The annual distribution, core author composition, and published journals of the articles were statistically analyzed. The research hotspots of professional degree graduate education are summarized through keyword clustering analysis. The professional degree graduate education is divided into four stages: the reference and exploration period (1991-1995), the practice and expansion period (1996-2001), the summary and reflection period (2002-2008), and the connotation promotion period (2009-2022). The research content and characteristics of each stage are discussed. Summarize the development trend of professional degree graduate education from three levels, and strengthen the research on the guiding role of national development strategies in the development of professional degree graduate education guided by strategic guidance at the macro level; Research on the innovation and construction of professional degree graduate education and training system driven by goal orientation at the medium level; At the micro level, issue oriented research is used as a starting point to carry out historical tracing, practical exploration, and international comparison and reference research.