Graduate education has grown exponentially in the last decades in Brazil. Between 1998 and 2018, the National Graduate System (SNPG) grew 188% and enrollment in masters and doctorates, 289%. In 2017, 21,393 PhDs and 61,147 masters graduated in the country, already surpassing one of the goals of the National Education Plan for 2024: the titling of 60 thousand new masters per year. This expansion has taken place all over the country, making relevant the studies to understand the dynamics, specificities and variations between the regions, states of the federation and segments of the institutions that offer graduate programs (public and private). With this in mind, this paper analyzes the expansion of the SNPG using one state of the federation as reference: Santa Catarina (SC). Among other reasons, the choice is due to the fact that the State occupies the seventh national position in terms of the number of graduate programs (PPG) and also in the number of undergraduate courses. In addition, SC has expanded its graduate education system in recent years, driven by the dynamics of internalization of higher education. Thus, the present study was developed through the use of quantitative and qualitative techniques, with emphasis on the systematization and analysis of data available on the Sucupira Platform and GeoCapes. The article shows, among other aspects, that graduate education in Santa Catarina overgrew the national average, totaling 326% from 1998 to 2018. In spite of that, the programs are distributed in only 17 of the 94 HEIs in the state. Likewise, in contrast to undergraduate courses, masters and doctorates are mostly offered by the public segment, which concentrates about 70% of enrollments (53% in federal public HEIs and 16.6% in the only state HEI). Finally, this research mapped the Santa Catarina graduate education system, including its achievements and limitations, so that it is possible both to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the results of past public policies of education and research, and to inspire future initiatives.