When BR broke up in 1983, Greg moved back to his native Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wasn't willing to say goodbye to BR but he started treating the band as a hobby. But when the administration found that he was no longer an official resident of the state of Wisconsin (he had just spent several years as a California resident) he was expelled. He went back to CA where he was a resident and started school at UCLA. In 1987 he got a master's degree at UCLA in Geology (he previously got a BA in Anthropology and his BSc degree in Geology there too, which was very field-oriented since he studied fossils). Then he did some field work in several places (North, Central and South America) and by the end of 1990 transferred to Cornell University (Ithaca) for a PhD. It'll be a Biology Ph.D, but he studies fossils. It's evolutionary biology-paleontology. By 1996 all he had left of his PhD was to write his thesis on bone tissue and take the "A" exam, which is the exam where Greg's committee (five people) sits in a room and asks him lots of awkward questions about bits of fossilized bones. However, the PhD was on hold for a big part of the late 1990s (during each of the long tours for STF, TGR and NS, for example). He was also a Teaching Assistant in the Evolutionary Biology department at Cornell University. He taught (TAed) mainly pre-medical students when they took a course in comparative anatomy. By 1999 he was working on the Geneva campus, which is one lake over from Ithaca (but belongs to Cornell Uni). In 1989 he said "I get the same good feeling from people who like BR and students who like my teaching, but interestingly very rarely do the two ever mix". His PhD is in Evolutionary Biology but he says he will actually be a doctor of Zoology (it is vertebrate fossils he studies). The actual PhD is on bone tissue and he's been said to be one of the five leading bone tissue paleontologists in the world. He's given conferences and published at least one paper in a scientific journal. Both his parents were professors and he also intends to be involved in science for the rest of his life. He once said "If I could make a million dollars with Bad Religion, I would start an institute that would be for research on early vertebrates, that's what I study. Be able to fund research and stuff like that". But when asked to choose, he answers ""I'd probably choose music, because it gives me a lot more freedom to express myself."
He took his first semester off from university when they had just signed to Atlantic (so for the first time BR toured for more than two months in a year).
The Gopher server for the Cornell phonebook had the following for Greg: name: Gregory W Graffin / nickname: Aludensparglemein / department: Ecology and Systematics / title: lead singer, AR McCune, advisor / project: Investigations into the origin of bone tissue, and travelling the world whilst playing loud aggressive music / type: student - graduate. A picture of Greg can be seen in a board in the building of the Ecology and Statistics department of Cornell University listing all of the graduated students in the department.