Determining the prospects for the development of socio-economic systems is associated with the procedures for developing a strategy, usually based on the results of an analysis of external and internal environmental factors and the subsequent determination of goals, from which the core of the strategy is formed. However, the distribution of methods for implementing strategy development algorithms and their combination largely depends on the object of development. The university's postgraduate studies are specific both in terms of regulatory support and the structure of the postgraduate course itself. Of particular interest is the university’s graduate school, the structure of which is distributed across a branch network, which opens up the possibility of considering the prospects for the development of graduate school from the point of view of the ecosystem approach. The work shows that with the help of well-known methods and procedures for conducting analysis and synthesis within the framework of the proposed algorithm, it is possible to build strategic prospects for the development of a network of postgraduate schools of university branches, aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the defense of postgraduate graduates, while solving the problems of the development of territories, government and business in based on synergistic effects characteristic of ecosystems.