Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The NRC Releases Its "Methodology" for Ranking Graduate Programs (Ranking to Follow...)

IHE has a useful story and summary of the 200-page (!) document.  What made the earlier NRC reports (1982, 1995) useful was they included systematic surveys of experts in different disciplines evaluating program faculty and training of students.  That is no more.   According to the IHE article, the worry about expert evaluation was that, "Many people assume departments at outstanding universities must be outstanding as a result, even if that's not the case, or people who associate certain stellar researchers with a department may not know that they have retired."  Dare I observe that there is a pretty simple solution to these problems:  ask experts to evaluate faculty lists, not university names, and make sure the faculty lists are current and exclude those who are retired, dead, not really teaching etc.

Instead of the peer evaluations that made the prior NRC reports so important, programs will now be evaluated using 21 different variables--many different in kind from each other (see below)--and all weighted differently.  Here are the variables being utilized (I wish I were making this up, but, really, I'm not!):

The 21 Program Characteristics Listed in the Faculty Questionnaire.

Faculty characteristics

i. Number of publications per faculty member

ii. Number of citations per publication (for non-humanities fields)

iii. Percent of faculty holding grants

iv. Involvement in interdisciplinary work

v. Racial/ethnic diversity of program faculty (only non-Asian minorities count)

vi. Gender diversity of program faculty

vii. Reception by peers of a faculty member’s work as measured by honors and awards

 

Student characteristics

i. Median GRE scores of entering students

ii. Percentage of students receiving full financial support

iii. Percentage of students with portable fellowships

iv. Number of student publications and presentations (not used)

v. Racial/ethnic diversity of the student population (only non-Asian minorities count)

vi. Gender diversity of the student population

vii. A high percentage of international students

 

Program characteristics

i. Average number of Ph.D.’s granted in last five years

ii. Percentage of entering students who complete a doctoral degree in a given time (6

years for non-humanities, 8 years for humanities).

iii. Time to degree

iv. Placement of students after graduation (percent in either positions or postdoctoral

fellowships in academia)

v. Percentage of students with individual work space

vi. Percentage of health insurance premiums covered by institution or program

vii. Number of student support activities provided by the institution or program

The weightings to be used in the case of philosophy programs are not yet public--the weightings were determined in each case by a survey of people in the field.   No doubt many of these individual measures will be illuminating, but the idea of aggregating them in order to say that "Ivy University is in the 5-15 cluster" will produce a meaningless, 'nonsense' number:  what does it mean to say Ivy University is somewhere between 5th and 15th based on some aggregation of the number of publications per faculty member, the number of international students, the number of non-Asian minority faculty, and the number of student support activities?   Who would care about such an aggregation?   What is most distressing is that the NRC has eliminated any meaningful measure of faculty quality, relying on factors that have no qualitative dimension (e.g.,  publications per faculty member) and proxies for quality like grants and honors, some of which are certainly probative (e.g., Guggenheim or NEH Fellowships), others of which will just reinforce traditional hierarchies because of their insular and self-reinforcing nature (e.g., American Academy of Arts & Sciences membership)).

And then, of course, there is the delay issue.  Most of the data collection on faculty took place over three years ago.  Among those who would have been included for philosophy at UT Austin, for example, are Robert Kane [now retired], me, and Robert C. Solomon [now deceased].  Chicago's evaluation will presumably include William Wimsatt (now retired), John Haugeland (retiring next year), and Charles Larmore (left for Brown).  One Ohio State department reports that more than 20% of the faculty is new since the time they submitted the faculty questionnaires to the NRC, while nearly 20% of the faculty at OSU then have either left or retired.  There will obviously be substantial variation in how much these changes in faculty rosters over the last 3-4 years matter, but in some cases, they will be very significant.     

In any case, I would be most interested to hear what philosophers think of the variables the NRC is using and also what they think of the idea of an aggregation of such variables.  Non-anonymous comments preferred, though you must at least submit a valid e-mail address; submit comments only once, they may take awhile to appear.

Top Research Universities Based on US News Data on PhD Programs

I haven't run one of these meta-analyses of US News reputation data on PhD programs in a number of years, but now that US News has conducted new surveys of natural science, humanities, and social science PhD programs over the last couple of years, I thought it might be amusing.  The scoring system is the one used previously, though I've limited the survey to the Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, and Physics), Social Sciences (Economics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology), and Humanities (English, History and Philosophy [from the PGR, of course]), excluding the professional schools and engineering, which not all schools offer.

The rank below is based on total score, followed by a breakdown of the total number of points due to natural science programs (NS), the total number of points due to social science & humanities programs (SSH), the number of fields in which the school ranked at least in the top 25, and the number of fields in which the school had a top five program.

1.  Stanford University (51 total; 24 in NS, 27 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 12 top five programs)

2.  University of California, Berkeley (49 total; 24 in NS, 25 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 10 top five programs)

3.  Harvard University (47 total; 20 in NS, 27 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 10 top five programs)

4.  Princeton University (42 total; 16 in NS, 26 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 7 top five programs)

5.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (37 total; 14 in NS, 23 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 5 top five programs)

6.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (36 total; 24 in NS, 12 in SSH, ranked in 10 of 13 fields, 7 top five programs)

6.  Yale University (36 total; 13 in NS, 23 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 4 top five programs)

8.  Columbia University (32 total; 14 in NS, 18 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 2 top five programs)

9.  University of California, Los Angeles (30 total; 10 in NS, 20 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 1 top five program)

9.  University of Chicago (30 total; 11 in NS, 19 in SSH, ranked in 12 of 13 fields, 3 top five programs)

11.  Cornell University (25 total; 15 in NS, 10 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

11.  University of Wisconsin, Madison (25 total; 10 in NS, 15 in SSH, ranked in 12 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

13.  California Institute of Technology (24 total; 21 in NS, 3 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 4 top five programs)

14.  University of Texas, Austin (21 total; 12 in NS, 9 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

15.  University of Pennsylvania (20 total; 6 in NS, 14 in SSH, ranked in 10 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

16.  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (17 total; 11 in NS, 6 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

17.  Duke University (16 total; 4 in NS, 12 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

17.  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (16 total; 2 in NS, 14 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

19.  Johns Hopkins University (14 total; 6 in NS, 8 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

19.  New York University (14 total; 3 in NS, 11 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

19.  Northwestern University (14 total; 3 in NS, 11 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Runners-Up:

University of California, San Diego (13 total; 6 in NS, 7 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (13 total; 4 in NS, 9 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs) 

University of Washington, Seattle (11 total; 8 in NS, 3 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Brown University (10 total; 4 in NS, 6 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Which academic discipline *really* loves rankings?

Economics.

Anti-Muslim Bigotry Emanating from Kalamazoo

When someone flagged for me last week Clayton Littlejohn's pointer to a bit of raving bigotry by one of the many right-wingers at the aptly-named "What's Wrong with the World" blog (which exemplifies, rather than analyzes, the phenomenon), I merely added a note about it as an afterthought to an earlier post.  But an alert reader has since pointed out to me that the author of the offending item, Lydia McGrew, is the spouse of the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University, which has long been a recommended terminal MA program in the PGR.  Here is what the Chair's spouse wrote:

Does this mean that I think Muslims in America should not have due process, should not be legally treated as innocent until proven guilty? No, it means I think they should not be in America....

[T]he time has come for conservative American parents to consider the danger posed to them by immigrant cultures that, to put it bluntly, make traditionalist parents look bad. It is in our interests to support the ending of Muslim immigration, thereby blocking a route by which the public will plausibly be made suspicious of parental rights and of countercultural groups.

Anyone interested can read the entire post to appreciate the "reasoning" underlying this item, but in short, it is this:  conservative Christians, especially those who homeschool, don't want society to interfere with the religious indoctrination of their children, therefore, conservative Christians should oppose Muslim immigration, since (it is alleged) some Muslim parents mistreat their children in ways that would prompt societal interference in the family.

It may well be that Professor McGrew, the Chair of the WMU Philosophy Department, does not share his wife's bigotry or hostility towards Muslims.  But, as my correspondent pointed out, I owe it to students, especially Muslim students, to flag this extraordinarily ugly display so that they can investigate the situation for themselves in the event they are considering the terminal MA program there.  

UPDATE:  Professor Allhof from WMU writes:

As Director of Graduate Studies at WMU, I can attest that we have had have had all sorts of minorities (racial, sexual, religious, etc.) in our program, and there has never been a complaint from any of them about the climate or their treatment.  Since I’ve been here, we haven’t had a Muslim student that I know of, but I suspect it’s only because we haven’t had many apply.  (One of our admittances for next year is from Iran, though he has yet to commit and I know nothing of his religious views.)  I encourage prospective students to contact me with any questions about the graduate program or else our incoming chair, who will be appointed next month.  Certainly Dr. Lydia McGrew’s views should not be taken to reflect those of the department, with which she is not affiliated.

I think that speaks fully to any reasonable concern someone might have had, and I thank Professor Allhof.

An Update on Some "Moves to Watch For" from the 2009 PGR

I thought it might be useful to update in one place the status of the 'moves to watch for' noted in the last PGR; in quick summary form:

1.  David Chalmers (ANU) turned down Princeton and Rutgers, and accepted a half-time post at NYU.  Due to the different calendar years, he will remain more-or-less full-time in Canberra as well.

2.  Daniel Jacobson (Bowling Green) turned down UC San Diego.

3.  Gabriel Richardson Lear and Jonathan Lear (both Chicago) turned down Yale.

4.  John MacFarlane (Berkeley) turned down Harvard and NYU.

5.  Michael Otsuka (UCL) turned down Pittsburgh.

6.  Kieran Setiya (Pittsburgh) turned down Texas.

7.  Allen Wood and Rega Wood (Indiana) will return to Stanford, though Rega will only teach the next two years there.

Jeremy Waldron (NYU) is still negotiating with Oxford on the offer of the Chichele Professorship in Social & Political Theory, and Calvin Normore, currently splitting between UCLA and McGill, has not, to the best of my knowledge, made a final decision about whether that arrangement will continue or whether he will move full-time to one or the other.

A Big Change on the Horizon for the PGR

After overseeing the PGR for twenty years (almost ten of them with the invaluable help of the Advisory Board), I've decided it's time to turn over the operation to others. 

Happily, Professor Richard Heck of Brown University and the Society for Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy have agreed to produce future iterations of the PGR, beginning in 2011.  More details below the fold:

The "Top Ten" Academic Presses in Philosophy

So the earlier poll, with more than 500 votes, is now complete.  The results struck me as fairly sensible.  Oxford University Press was the hands-down winner, and Cambridge University Press was a distant, but clear, second.  Blackwell came in third, and Harvard University Press fourth.  Three presses were fairly close to each other in the poll, but distant fifths from Harvard:  MIT Press, Routledge, and Princeton University Press.  Then there was another drop in votes before Cornell University Press and University of Chicago Press, which were very close.  Yale University Press was a somewhat distant 10th, with Kluwer/Springer not far behind.

Some readers pointed out that Oxford may get an advantage from the fact that it publishes more philosophy than any other press--though the fact that OUP publishes leading work in every sub-field of the discipline probably ought to count in OUP's favor.  But Oxford certainly has a much larger catalogue than most of the others.  PUP, which may have the smallest catalogue, also, in my opinion, may have the highest 'per capita' quality.  OUP, CUP, MIT, and Routledge all publish work in Continental philosophy quite regularly.  Harvard is an unusual case, and not just because their catalogue is small, but because, as one friend put it to me, their catalogue actually has "a philosophical position" (roughly anti-naturalist, and whatever is on the agenda at Harvard and Pittsburgh, plus some ethics):  this means Harvard publishes important books within the "party line," but nothing at all in many of the most lively areas of current research.

Thoughts from readers on the results?  Signed comments only, meaning a full name and an e-mail consistent with that.

The Highest Quality "General" Philosophy Journals in English

So with more than 500 votes cast, the earlier poll is now closed.  Here are "the top 19" journals (after which there is a drop-off in votes).  Some useful information here, also some surprises.

1. Philosophical Review  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Journal of Philosophy  loses to Philosophical Review by 275–125

3. Nous  loses to Philosophical Review by 307–118, loses to Journal of Philosophy by 240–183

4. Mind  loses to Philosophical Review by 309–108, loses to Nous by 221–192

5. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research  loses to Philosophical Review by 361–80, loses to Mind by 307–132

6. Australasian Journal of Philosophy  loses to Philosophical Review by 386–65, loses to Philosophy & Phenomenological Research by 327–102

7. Philosophical Studies  loses to Philosophical Review by 277–47, loses to Australasian Journal of Philosophy by 153–143

8. Analysis  loses to Philosophical Review by 384–71, loses to Philosophical Studies by 259–159

9. Philosophical Quarterly  loses to Philosophical Review by 376–57, loses to Analysis by 222–179

10. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society  loses to Philosophical Review by 387–44, loses to Philosophical Quarterly by 273–105

11. Philosophers' Imprint  loses to Philosophical Review by 264–28, loses to Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society by 135–124

12. Philosophical Perspectives  loses to Philosophical Review by 369–27, loses to Philosophers' Imprint by 167–141

13. American Philosophical Quarterly  loses to Philosophical Review by 387–42, loses to Philosophical Perspectives by 138–118

14. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly  loses to Philosophical Review by 410–23, loses to American Philosophical Quarterly by 169–167

15. The Monist  loses to Philosophical Review by 385–38, loses to Pacific Philosophical Quarterly by 199–102

16. Canadian Journal of Philosophy  loses to Philosophical Review by 393–32, loses to The Monist by 161–132

17. Philosophical Topics  loses to Philosophical Review by 379–12, loses to Canadian Journal of Philosophy by 197–112

18. European Journal of Philosophy  loses to Philosophical Review by 265–24, loses to Philosophical Topics by 135–133

19. Ratio  loses to Philosophical Review by 395–22, loses to European Journal of Philosophy by 152–134

Comments are open; only signed comments will be approved (an e-mail is not enough, you must sign your full name to the comment).

Deciding Between Admissions Offers: The Importance of Visiting/Talking With Current Students

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 3, 2008 (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN)

Applicants to PhD and MA programs are now receiving offers of admission and, if they are lucky, are beginning to weigh choices between different departments.  I want to reiterate a point made in the PGR, namely, that students are well-advised to talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   There are often things you will want to know that you won't glean from familiarity with the excellence of the faculty's work, even if that remains the most important, if defeasible, reason for choosing a particular department.  Here are some examples of information that no ranking, no departmental brochure, and no "official" departmental representive will tell you about; all of these are drawn from stories I've heard from students over the last few years about ranked departments (the departments will remain unnamed, obviously).  You can think of them as representing "types" of problems you should be aware of before enrolling.  I've tweaked some of the details to protect identities.

The Absent Faculty:  Are the faculty who look so good on paper actually around and interested in working with students?  I heard a story about a key senior person in one department who is an alcoholic, and who simply ignores his students.  In another department, almost all the graduate students had to sign an open letter to the faculty a few years ago protesting the failure of faculty to return graded papers and their general lack of interest in mentoring the students.   In yet another department, a well-known senior member of the faculty spent so much time travelling and lecturing around the world, that he rarely had time to review or discuss work carefully with students. 

The Sexual Predator Faculty:  Are women treated as young philosophers and aspiring professionals, or do faculty regularly view them as a potential source for dates and sexual liasons?  It's a bit shocking to realize that this is still a live issue in some departments, but, sadly, it is.  Are faculty-student sexual relations common in the department?  What happens when the relations end?  Are there repeated cases of sexual harassment complaints against faculty in the department?  Do they ever result in discipline?  I suppose it is possible this could be an issue for male students, but all the reports I've gotten over the years have been from women victimized by male faculty. 

The Nasty Faculty:  Talented philosophers and scholars often differ, dramatically, in how pleasant they are personally and professionally.  I recall the story of one department where a member of the faculty was known to reduce students to tears in seminar.  In another department, a faculty member regularly refuses to work with students, even those interested in his areas; he works only with those he deems "worthy," and there are not many of them!  In another department, faculty openly express doubts about the competence of the graduate students and their ability.  Make sure the philosophers who seem most interesting to you don't fall into these categories!

The Factionalized Faculty:  Many faculties are "factionalized," in the sense that there are sub-groups that rarely see "eye to eye" about departmental issues, from appointments to admissions.  Where this becomes worrisome, though, for a prospective student is when certain members of the faculty who share interests and approaches control all the key resources--fellowships, resources for speakers etc.--and use that control to define "in" and "out" groups of faculty and students:  students with the "wrong" philosophical interests or who express an interest in the "wrong" faculty members are denied access to important perks and support.  This kind of ugly factionalization is less common, but it exists. 

I wish it were possible to meaningfuly measure and evaluate faculties along these important dimensions, but, alas, it is not.  I can report, based on accumulated anecdotes over many years, that some departments are really exceptional for how pleasant they are as places to do graduate study:  faculty are engaged, kind, supportive, committed, and professional in their interactions with students.  Arizona, North Carolina, MIT, UC Riverside, and U Mass/Amherst are among those about which one regularly hears these kinds of glowing reports.  I have no doubt there are many others, and the way for a prospective student to discover them is to talk to lots of current students.

Good luck with your decisions!

Summary of Results for Canadian PhD Programs in 2009 PGR

As he has done in the past, Richard Zach (Calgary) has compiled this useful summary of how Canadian schools fared in the latest evaluation exercise.

Problem with Links in the 2006-08 PGR

Several folks have notified me that the specialty ranking links in the prior PGR now go to the 2009 PGR results, instead of the results from the prior exercise.  I've notified Blackwell, and hopefully this will be fixed in the next day or so.  Thanks for the heads up--and since many people have spotted this one, I thought I'd flag it here as well.

The New Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2009 is...

...now on-line.  Past experience suggests there will be various typos and other errors (e.g., broken links) discovered during the week; please e-mail me if you spot one.  (Please include in your e-mail the URL of the page where the error occurs.)  My thanks again to the members of the Advisory Board and the close to 300 philosophers who participated in the surveys. 

UPDATE:  Please note that in the specialty rankings schools are ranked into groups based on their mean score rounded to the nearest .5 (that appears next to the "Group 2," "Group 3" etc.).  The numbers next to the name of the schools in that group are the median and the mode, not the mean score.  Perhaps it would be helpful to quote this material from the introduction to the specialty rankings to clarify their interpretation:

Next to each grouping, you will find the rounded mean for that group; next to the name of each program within that group you will find the median score for that faculty in parentheses, and then the mode score:  where the mode and median are higher or lower than the mean, it is probably safe to assume that there was some notable divergence of opinion among evaluators.  (Where there was more than one mode, only the average of the two is listed, to simplify the presentation.)  Within a grouping, programs are listed alphabetically.  Only programs with a rounded mean of “3” (meaning “Good”) or higher are so grouped.   (In order to increase the pool of faculties a student should consider, any school with a mean of 2.5 or higher and either a median or mode of 3 was also rounded up to “3” and listed.) 

The Advisory Board has added to the specialty rankings two categories of programs.  Faculties ranked in 2004 or 2006, but not included in the 2008 survey, are marked with an #.  Faculties not rated in 2004 or 2006, but deemed by the Board strong in an area, are marked with an *. 

The purpose of the specialty rankings is to identify programs in particular fields that a student should investigate for himself or herself.  Because of the relatively small number of raters in each specialization, students are urged not to assign much weight at all to small differences (e.g., being in Group 2 versus Group 3).   More evaluators in the pool might well have resulted in changes of .5 in rounded mean in either direction; this is especially likely where the median score is either above or below the norm for the grouping.  Also bear in mind that (1) programs with more faculty specializing in an area tended to be rated more highly than those with just one philosopher in the field; and (2) programs with specialists on the regular full-time faculty rather than “cognates” or part-time faculty tend to be rated more highly in the field.

"Gourmet" Reports for Other Disciplines?

With a new PGR imminent, I ought to return to a topic about which I get asked periodically.  For example, several months ago, a graduate student in art history wrote:

I have been an interested reader of the Philosophical Gourmet Report for several years.  As an undergraduate art history major applying to graduate school, I wished that such a report existed for art history.  Now I am about to finish my PhD, and I still wish that such a report existed for art history!

 

Right now I’m mainly worried about my own career. But if, in a few years, I have a good tenured job and there is still no Art Historical Gourmet report, I will want to create one.

I wanted to ask if you would consider posting a list of “advice for those considering starting reports on other disciplines,” or perhaps you have already done so and I missed it.   I’m sure that there is a lot of work involved and a lot of potential pitfalls.

 

In the meantime, thanks for your work on the PGR.

Over the years, I've certainly heard similar sentiments from many grad students or aspiring grad students in history, political science, and other fields.  More recently, I've learned of efforts by a grad student and some supportive faculty in classics to set up such a report in that field.  It is hardly surprising that such reports do not exist--for reasons I'll make clear, below--but perhaps with the success of the PGR, others will be inspired to undertake the task in other fields, where it would no doubt help students.  The benefit for students are obvious and legion:  those "out of the loop" of leading departments can find out what leading scholars, senior and junior, think about the best programs, and those attending undergrad at leading departments can get some perspective on the opinions offered by their faculty advisors.  That such a report has an obvious value for students is, alas, no obstacle to its reception among academics.  More on that in a moment.

My correspondent is obviously right to think about an Art History Gourmet Report as a post-tenure endeavor.  Systematically evaluating your professional colleagues is not a ticket to career advancement!  The work involved in the PGR in the form it has assumed over the last decade is, indeed, substantial:  identifying evaluators, collecting information on their educational backgrounds and specialties, entering this into spreadsheets, creating the on-line survey, and then processing, transcribing and double-checking the results.    Many of the pitfalls of the undertaking only became apparent over time.  The PGR, as longtime readers will know, emerged as the force it is in academic philosophy through a serious of accidental accretions of influence (there is a decent account here, though you can see my cantekerous gripes about some inaccuracies in this account here).  When I first started doing a simple version of it in 1989 and subsequent years, circulating it to a few friends, who circulated it to theirs, I never anticipated where it would be twenty years later.  Entry on to the Internet in 1996 increased the PGR's influence, and made necessary more systematic methods of evaluation, which has been all too the good.

But the "pitfalls" for such an enterprise are, alas, many.  Human beings are often vain, academics especially so, and people's self-image is, not surprisingly, usually out of sync (in part always, sometimes in whole) with the perception of others.  Rankings therefore are guaranteed to make some people angry.  (If you want to be universally loved, or are particularly sensitive to what people think of you, producing rankings is not the way to go!)  Some academics are "control freaks" and are furious when their ability to indoctrinate their students with a particular vision of the field is contradicted by a very public resource, which represents the input of hundreds of equally or more distinguished philosophers.  Many academics--maybe this is especially true of philosophers--seem to be in denial as to the fact that theirs is a profession, with hierarchies and a complicated sociology of institutional status and chains of influence, all of which it behooves students to be aware of.   All faculty, of course, profess an interest in the well-being of students, but the human capacity for self-deception is quite substantial.  The vain, the control freaks, and others will never cast their objections to an evaluation effort candidly, needless to say.  I have yet to encounter a critic of the PGR who has subsequently done anything constructive to help prospective students.  The best suggestions and constructive criticism will usually come from those who participate in the evaluation process, since they are the ones who see some value in collecting and aggregating expert assessments, and so have an interest in improving the procedures.  I would attend to that advice especially carefully.  But even those disengaged from the process sometimes raise interesting isssues (I'll discuss an example next week).

There is one genuine danger associated with any evaluation enterprise if that enterprise is as successful and influential as the PGR has been.  People undoubtedly adjust their behavior in reponse to evaluation metrics, and it is important to make sure that the incentives created by such metrics encourage constructive adjustments.  Producing both overall and specialty rankings ensures that there are many different benchmarks on which faculties can improve their standing.  Including in the evaluator pool senior and junior scholars, and scholars from a diverse array of sub-specialties, ensures that no one vision of the field dominates.  (Although in the current iteration of the PGR, coming out on Monday, specialists in Continental philosophy are probably slightly over-represented relative to their numbers in the profession, this will not, I am sure, cause even the slightest hesitation by certain marginalized cliques from misrepresenting the PGR, as they always do.  Any field with a noisy minority faction will be impossible to satisfy in any serious evaluation effort.)  How to deal with the self-reflexive character of a regular evaluation exercise is a topic on which I continue to welcome input and advice.

I have to confess that sometimes I'm not sure I would have undertaken the efforts in the beginning if I had realized how disgracefully alleged professionals and adults would have behaved over the years.  Don't misunderstand:  I am both glad and proud to have helped so many students who shared my own enthusiasm for philosophy, and I do appreciate the many hundreds of e-mails students have sent me over the years, and the tremendous support and encouragement from hundreds of professional philosophers as well.  I am glad that leading PhD programs now provide unusually detailed information about job placement, something I forced them to do with the threat of embarrassment by calling attention to their secrecy (this, of course, led to much indignation including, memorably, by a leading Kantian moral philosopher:  obviously it violates the categorical imperative to let prospective students know if PhD graduates from a school are getting jobs!).   I am pleased to have broken the mindless focus on pedigree that predated the PGR, in which "Ivy League" or "Berkeley" or "Chicago" were arbiters of excellence, without any regard for the quality of the faculties at these institutions.  But the costs--in terms of having to defend the enterprise again and again (rarely against meritorious criticism), and to suffer at times mindless abuse and defamation--have sometimes been quite tiresome.  Being above average in pugnacity, needless to say, is also a useful attribute in this kind of undertaking, since the more successful it is, the more often it will be attacked. 

New PGR Will be "Live" On-Line on Monday, February 23

At the usual site.  Various items are still being proofed, and we decided it is better to go live Monday, so that any remaining errors can be corrected quickly (Blackwell technical staff won't be available during the weekend to fix problems).  Thanks to all for your patience.

UPDATE:  Link now fixed!

The New PGR Should be On-Line...

...by Friday at the usual URL.  More details soon.

PGR Update

Most of the 2009 PGR has been delivered to Blackwell.  I may continue to post a few excerpts of the results over the next few weeks, until it all appears on-line at the current URL.  My sincere thanks to the 300+ philosophers who participated in the surveys and provided their expert input.

I am thinking that, with the financial crisis, it may may make sense to delay the next PGR till 2012 or 2013, since the pace of faculty movement is likely to slow considerably.  Thoughts from readers and those who use the Report?  Signed comments only.  Thanks.

Biggest Drops in "Overall" Ranking in the New PGR

Those faculties that saw the most dramatic drops in overall rank in the 2009 surveys compared to the fall 2006 surveys were Stanford University, which fell from 6th to 9th; Columbia University from 9th to 13th;  University of Texas at Austin, from 13th to 20th; Johns Hopkins University from 35th to 43rd; University of Washington at Seattle from 35th to 43rd; and Arizona State University from 44th to outside the "top 53."  Outside the U.S., the most dramatic downward movement was probably by the University of Melbourne, which fell well outside the Australasian top four after being squarely in the top five in all prior surveys.   (The financial difficulties facing Melbourne, and the loss of academic staff, are noted here.)

Stanford had three significant changes that surely caused the drop in overall rank:  John Perry (philosophy of language and mind) entered a retirement arrangement which has him teaching part-time at Stanford for a few more years and half-time at UC Riverside.  In addition, Allen Wood (Kant, 19th-century Continental philosophy) and Rega Wood (medieval philosophy) accepted senior offers from Indiana University, Bloomington.  Stanford may still lure them back, but without "all" of Perry and the losses of the Woods, Stanford took a clear hit.

Columbia lost the political philosopher Thomas Pogge to Yale, and also saw a number of regular and cognate faculty enter the "over 70" category as of 2009 (including Haim Gaifman and Joseph Raz).  Still, I'm inclined to think Columbia's slip is a bit of a statistical blip, rather than a fundamental change in the department. 

Texas had more losses since the fall 2006 surveys.  Robert Kane, a leading writer on free will and ethics, retires at the end of this academic year, and so was no longer listed on the faculty since he will not be teaching as of 09-10.  Robert C. Solomon, well-known for work in philosophy of the emotions, ethics, and Continental philosophy, passed away unexpectedly.  Kane and Solomon, together, had long been mainstays of the faculty.  In addition, the legal and political philosopher Leslie Green (who had been part-time) and me (working partly in legal and moral philosophy, partly in Continental philosophy) both left.   I thought the department made some strong senior and junior appointments in the interim (including Ian Proops [history of analytic philosophy, Kant] from Michigan, and, on a half-time basis, Hans Kamp [philosophy of language, formal semantics]  who is emeritus at Stuttgart), and while these appointments deepened the faculty's strength in particular areas, it obviously did not offset the narrowing effects of the losses.  This appears to be the flip-side of the Yale story:  breadth yields favorable result in the PGR surveys, lack of breadth not as much.

Johns Hopkins, a small department with (in my opinion) unusually high per capita faculty quality, lost a mainstay of the department for decades, the philosopher of science Peter Achinstein, who moved to Yeshiva University, as well as some junior faculty (though they made an outstanding junior appointment in early modern philosophy).

Washington may also be a statistical blip, though they did suffer some losses, including the ancient philosophy scholar Marc Cohen, who is phasing into retirement, and the environmental philosopher Andrew Light, who moved to George Mason.

Finally, Arizona State's drop is easy to explain: Stewart Cohen (epistemology), the preeminent senior member of the faculty (apart from the legal philosopher Jeffrie Murphy, who is now mainly in the law school), accepted an offer from the University of Arizona.  ASU continued to enjoy a good showing in several areas in the specialty rankings, however, including feminist philosophy, ethics and applied ethics, decision, rational choice & game theory, and philosophy of biology, among other areas.

Top Four Faculties "Overall" in Canada

The numbers in parentheses are the mean score, followed by the median.

1.  University of Toronto (3.6, 3.5)

2.  University of Western Ontario (2.7, 3.0)

3.  McGill University (2.5, 2.5)

4.  University of British Columbia (2.4, 2.5)

No other Canadian faculty scored above 2.1.

Choosing Between Graduate Study in a Philosophy Department vs. a History and Philosophy of Science Program?

Christopher Hitchcock, a distinguished philosopher of science at the California Institute of Technology and member of the PGR Advisory Board, has drafted, with input from some other philosophers of science on the Advisory Board (Craig Callender, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Alexander Rosenberg, and William Wimsatt), a very useful statement for students interested in philosophy of science and cognate fields and trying to decide about whether to pursue PhD studies in a philosophy program or a specialized program, such as "History and Philosophy of Science."  This advice will appear in the new PGR, but I thought it might be useful to flag it here for the benefit of interested students and their advisors:

Students interested in the philosophy of science, the history of science, and/or logic may face the choice of whether to pursue a graduate degree in a traditional philosophy department, or in a separate department of history and philosophy of science (HPS), or logic and philosophy of science (LPS). In the English-speaking world, the following schools have separate HPS or LPS departments:

USA:

University of Pittsburgh (HPS)

University of California, Irvine (LPS)

Indiana University (HPS)

UK

Cambridge University (HPS)

London School of Economics (LPS)

(Note: LSE has a department of philosophy, logic, and methodology of science, but no separate philosophy department.)

University of Leeds (HPS)

Canada

University of Toronto (Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology)

Australasia

University of Sydney (HPS)

University of Melbourne (HPS)

University of New South Wales (HPS)

 

Members of HPS and LPS departments were included together with philosophy faculty in the faculty lists used both for overall rankings, and for rankings in specialty areas.  (There are, of course, philosophy departments that are strong in philosophy of science that do not appear on this list because they do not have independent HPS or LPS programs. Prospective students should consult the relevant specialty rankings elsewhere in this report,)

 

In addition, a number of schools have interdisciplinary graduate programs in HPS or LPS that can be pursued from within the philosophy department (or other relevant department). These include Stanford University (HPS), University of California, Berkeley (LPS), University of Notre Dame (HPS), University of Chicago (HPS), University of California, San Diego (Science Studies Program, including HPS and also Sociology of Science), Duke University (History and Philosophy of Science, Medicine, and Technology), University of Washington, Seattle (HPS), Carnegie Mellon University (Program in Logic, Computation, and Methodology), Arizona State University (HPS; some of ASU’s philosophers are actually housed in the School of Life Sciences, rather than in the philosophy department) and Florida State University (HPS).  

 

Graduates of HPS and LPS programs who focus on philosophy of science will often be competing with graduates of philosophy departments for jobs in philosophy. Of course, students who are interested in pursuing graduate work in an HPS or LPS department should seek detailed information about the placement record of that department, just as they would for a philosophy department. Note also that departments may differ in where they place their students. Pittsburgh’s HPS department places most of its graduates in philosophy departments. Indiana’s HPS department frequently places graduates in the history of science in history departments. Carnegie Mellon places a number of its graduates from its program in Logic, Computation, and Methodology in departments of mathematics, computer science, and statistics.

 

Typically, students in an HPS or LPS graduate program will be able to take courses offered by the school’s philosophy department, and will have opportunities to interact with faculty in the philosophy department. (And likewise, philosophy students will have an opportunity to take HPS or LPS courses and interact with HPS or LPS faculty.) Prospective students would do well to inquire of current students to determine to what extent this actually occurs. Those who plan to make extensive use of a school’s philosophy department would do well to consider the overall quality of that department, as well as of the HPS or LPS department. Moreover, students in HPS or LPS programs who plan to do extensive study in another department, such as history, or some branch of science, should consider the quality of the relevant department.

 

One important difference between and HPS or LPS department and a philosophy department will be the curriculum and academic requirements. Students in an HPS program can be expected to take a number of courses in the history of science, and may also have to take qualifying exams in the history of science. (This may be less of an issue at British and Australian schools, that put less emphasis on graduate coursework.) Moreover, students in HPS and LPS programs are often encouraged to take courses in the sciences. Most philosophers who pursue research in the philosophy of science find that a solid education in science and its history provides them with a deeper appreciation of their field, as well as a wealth of case studies. Moreover, students in HPS programs will typically receive a good education in the history of philosophy, as this field overlaps importantly with the history of science. On the other hand, it may be harder for students in an HPS program to obtain a background in other central areas of philosophy, such as metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, or ethics and political philosophy. Students in HPS programs are usually well advised to try to learn about some of these areas from the school’s philosophy department, to help them compete effectively for jobs in philosophy. Students in an LPS program will obtain a strong background in formal logic, which can be helpful in the philosophy of science and mathematics, as well as in areas like philosophy of language. These students may find that it is harder to obtain a background in other areas of philosophy, such as the history of philosophy.

 

Another difference is that HPS and LPS departments are sometimes willing to admit students whose background in philosophy is less extensive than that which is required for most philosophy programs. This is not to say that students can be expected to be admitted to HPS or LPS departments if they have done poorly in philosophy courses. But if a student has a strong background in a relevant area, say history or some branch of science for an HPS program, or mathematics or computer science for an LPS program, this may partially compensate for a shortage of philosophy courses on one’s transcript. This can be a mixed blessing, however, as all graduates of HPS or LPS programs will eventually need acquire a solid grounding in philosophy to compete effectively in the philosophy job market. Obviously, this is less of a concern for those who plan to seek employment outside of philosophy.                        

Top Ten Faculties in "History of Analytic Philosophy (including Wittgenstein)" in the English-Speaking World

In the specialty rankings, faculties are grouped according to their mean score, rounded to the nearest .5.  In parentheses after the school's name, the median and mode scores are listed.  Within the grouping, faculties are listed alphabetically.

Group 1 (1-2) (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

University of St. Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program (4.5, 5)

University of Texas, Austin (4.25, 4.5)

 

Group 2 (3-10)  (rounded mean of 4.0) (median, mode)

Birkbeck College, University of London (4, 3.75)

Brown University (3.75, 5)

Harvard University (4, 4.5)

New York University (4, 4.25)

University of Chicago (4, 5)

University of Illinois, Chicago (4, 4)

University of Pittsburgh (4.25, 4.5)

University of York (4, 4)

 

Evaluators:   Warren Goldfarb, Jane Heal, Robin Jeshion, Bernard Linsky, Robert May, Stephen Mulhall, Peter Pagin, Ian Proops, Thomas Ricketts, Ian Rumfitt, Mark Sainsbury, Scott Soames, Jason Stanley.

Top 9 Faculties in "Political Philosophy" in the English-Speaking World

In the specialty rankings, faculties are grouped according to their mean score, rounded to the nearest .5.  In parentheses after the school's name, the median and mode scores are listed.  Within the grouping, faculties are listed alphabetically.

Group 1 (1-3) (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

Harvard University (5, 5)

New York University (5, 5)

University of Arizona (4.5, 4.5)

 

Group 2 (4-9) (rounded mean of 4.0) (median, mode)

Brown University (4, 4)

Oxford University (4.25, 4.5)

Princeton University (4, 5)

Stanford University (4.5, 4.5)

University College London (3.75, 3.75)

Yale University (4, 4.25)

 

Evaluators:  Kenneth Baynes, Christopher Bertram, Cristina Bicchieri, Brian Bix, Christopher Bobonich, James Bohman, David Brink, Andrew Chitty, Roger Crisp, Stephen Davies, John Deigh, Julia Driver, Gerald Dworkin, William Edmundson, Gerald Gaus, Margaret Gilbert, Brad Hooker, Shelly Kagan, Matthew Kramer, Colin Macleod, Jeff McMahan, Christopher Morris, Alastair Norcross, Calvin Normore, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Otsuka, Thomas Pogge, Arthur Ripstein, Mathias Risse, Michael Rosen, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, David Schmidtz, A. John Simmons, Wayne Sumner, Robert Talisse, John Tasioulas, Peter Vallentyne, W.J. Waluchow, Georgia Warnke, Andrew Williams, Jonathan Wolff.

Top Five Philosophy Faculties in the U.K.

These are the results of the "overall" faculty quality survey for U.K. programs.  The top five are as follows (mean and median scores followed in parentheses):

1.  Oxford University (4.7, 5.0)

2.  University of St. Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program (3.6, 3.5)

3.  Cambridge University (3.4, 3.5)

4.  University College London (3.2, 3.5)

5.  King's College, London (3.1, 3.0)

Top 11 Faculties in "General Philosophy of Science (excluding philosophy of the specific sciences)" in the English-Speaking World

In the specialty rankings, faculties are grouped according to their mean score rounded to the nearest .5.  The median and mode scores are listed in parentheses after the school name; within a group, the faculties are listed alphabetically.

Group 1 (1) (mean of 4.5)(median, mode)

University of Pittsburgh (4.5, 5)

 

Group 2 (2-11) (mean of 4.0)(median, mode)

Carnegie-Mellon University (4, 4)

Columbia University (4, 4.25)

London School of Economics (4, 4)

Oxford University (4, 4.5)

Rutgers University, New Brunswick (4, 3.5)

University of California, Irvine (4.5, 4)

University of California, San Diego (4, 4)

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4.25, 4.25)

University of Western Ontario (4, 4)

University of Wisconsin, Madison (4, 4)

 

Evaluators:  Roger Ariew, Jeffrey Barrett, William Bechtel, Alexander Bird, Craig Callender, David Christensen, Mark Colyvan, John Dupre, Marc Ereshefsky, Ken Gemes, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Paul Griffiths, Alan Hajek, William Harper, Christopher Hitchcock, Jim Joyce, James Ladyman, Barry Loewer, John Norton, David Papineau, Huw Price, Alexander Rosenberg, Paul Roth, Laura Ruetsche, Howard Sankey, Simon Saunders, Jonathan Schaffer, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Elliott Sober, Kyle Stanford, Michael Strevens, J.D. Trout, Eric Watkins, William Wimsatt, Alison Wylie.

Top Nine Faculties in "Philosophy of Language" in the English-Speaking World

In the specialty rankings, faculties are grouped according to their mean score rounded to the nearest .5.  The median and mode scores are listed in parentheses after the school name; within a group, the faculties are listed alphabetically.

Group 1 (1) (rounded mean of 5.0) (median, mode)

Rutgers University, New Brunswick (5, 5)

 

Group 2 (2-4)  (rounded mean of 4.5) (median, mode)

 

Massachussetts Institute of Technology (4.5, 5)

New York University (4.5, 5)

University of Southern California (4.5, 4)

 

Group 3 (5-9)  (rounded mean of 4.0) (median, mode)

 

City University of New York Graduate Center (4, 4)

Oxford University (4.25, 4.5)

Princeton University (4, 4)

University of California, Los Angeles (4, 4)

University of Texas, Austin (4, 4)

 

Evaluators:  David Braun, Berit Brogaard, David Chalmers, Jonathan Cohen, Joshua Dever, Michael Devitt, Andy Egan, Graeme Forbes, Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, Christopher  Gauker, Anthony Gillies, Michael Glanzberg, Patrick Greenough, Anil Gupta, Jane Heal, James Higginbotham, Christopher Hookway, Henry Jackman, Robin Jeshion, Jeffrey King, Kathrin Koslicki, Frederick Kroon, Ernest LePore, Bernard Linsky, Barry Loewer, Peter Ludlow, Robert May, Brian McLaughlin, Alex Miller, Alex Oliver, Peter Pagin, Ian Proops, Denis Robinson, Daniel Rothschild, Ian Rumfitt, Mark Sainsbury, Nathan Salmon, Jennifer Saul, Mark Schroeder, Laura Schroeter, Ted Sider, Susanna Siegel, Scott Soames, David Sosa, Robert Stainton, Jason Stanley, Eric Swanson, Zoltan Szabo, Brian Weatherson, Timothy Williamson, Crispin Wright, Stephen Yablo.

PGR Publication Schedule

By tomorrow, I hope to send to the Advisory Board the full specialty ranking results, for review and discussion about faculties not included in the evaluation exercise which ought to be added to the specialties.  I am hoping a week after that to have finalized those rankings, as well as updated the other sections of the PGR, and to send the whole thing to Blackwell.  (Because I have a contract with Blackwell, I can't simply post all the results on the blog, which is why I can only release some previews.)  Blackwell usually takes between 2-3 weeks to get the whole thing formatted for release on the Internet.  I am hopeful that by mid-February the entire Report will be available at the usual site.

The "Top Ten" Faculties in Ethics in the English-Speaking World

"Ethics" here includes normative ethics, practical reasoning, and moral psychology, but excludes applied ethics and metaethics, which were ranked separately.   In the specialty rankings, faculties are grouped according to their mean score rounded to the nearest .5.  The median and mode scores are listed in parentheses after the school name; within a group, the faculties are listed alphabetically.

Group 1 (1) (rounded mean of 5.0)

Harvard University (5, 5)

Group 2 (2-5) (rounded mean of 4.5)

New York University (5, 5)

Oxford University (4.5, 5)

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4.5, 4.5)

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (4.5, 4.5)

Group 3 (6-11) (rounded mean of 4.0)

Princeton University (4, 4)

Rutgers University, New Brunswick (4, 4.5)

University of Arizona (4, 4)

University of California, Los Angeles (4, 4)

University of Toronto (4, 4)

Yale University (4.25, 4)

Evaluators:  Julia Annas, Christopher Bobonich, Michael Bratman, David Brink, Thomas Carson, Ruth Chang, Roger Crisp, Garrett Cullity, Jonathan Dancy, Justin D’Arms, John Deigh, John Doris, James Dreier, Julia Driver, Gerald Dworkin, John Martin Fischer, Owen Flanagan, Richard Fumerton, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Brad Hooker, Terence Irwin, P.J. Ivanhoe, Shelly Kagan, Paul Katsafanas, Nico Kolodny, Colin Macleod, Ron Mallon, Jeff McMahan, David McNaughton, Christopher Morris, Shaun Nichols, Alastair Norcross, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Otsuka, Thomas Pogge, C.D.C. Reeve, Bernard Reginster, Arthur Ripstein, Carolina Sartorio, Geoffrey  Sayre-McCord, David Schmidtz, Mark Schroeder, Stephen Stich, Wayne Sumner, John Tasioulas, Valerie Tiberius, Peter Vallentyne, Bryan van Norden, Ralph Wedgwood, Catherine Wilson, Jonathan Wolff, David Wong.

Top 20 Faculties in the English-Speaking World Based on New PGR Surveys

The mean score is listed in parentheses; the PGR will also report the median score.

1.    New York University (4.9)

2.    Oxford University (4.7)

3.    Rutgers University, New Brunswick (4.6)

4.    Princeton University (4.3)

5.    University of Pittsburgh (4.2)

6.    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4.1)

7.    Harvard University (4.0)

7.    Massachussetts Institute of Technology (4.0)

9.    Yale University (3.9)

10.    Stanford University (3.8)

10.    University of California, Berkeley (3.8)

10.    University of California, Los Angeles (3.8)

10.    University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (3.8)

14.    Australian National University (3.7)

14.    Columbia University (3.7)

14.    University of Arizona (3.7)

17.    City University of New York Graduate Center (3.6)

17.    University of Notre Dame (3.6)

17.    University of St. Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program (3.6)

17.    University of Toronto (3.6)

Top Faculties in (most of the) History of Philosophy Specialty Areas

These were the faculties that had the highest rounded mean score in some of the major history of philosophy specialties; I have omitted the median and mode score here, but they will appear in the PGR.  Faculties are listed alphabetically where there is more than one with the same rounded mean score in the top group.

Ancient Philosophy:  Oxford University

Medieval Philosophy:  Oxford University, St. Louis University, University of Notre Dame, and University of Toronto.

Early Modern Philosophy-17th Century:  Yale University.

Early Modern Philosophy-18th Century:  Yale University.

Kant:  Indiana University at Bloomington, University of Notre Dame, and University of Pennsylvania.

19th-Century Continental Philosophy:  New York University and University of Chicago.

20th-Century Continental Philosophy:  Georgetown University, University of California at Riverside, and University of Chicago.

History of Analytic Philosophy:  University of St. Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program and University of Texas at Austin.

Preview of the Overall Survey Results for the New PGR: Breadth Has Rewards!

260 philosophers participated in the "overall" survey of faculty quality just completed.  A number of faculties had noticeable improvements in their overall rank, in each case connected to tangible changes in faculty membership.  (You can get a reasonably good snapshot of changes in faculty composition since the 2006 surveys here, though there are some important developments that post-date that summary.) 

One of the most dramatic improvements was for the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, which went from 16th in 2006 to 8th in the 2009 surveys.  Given the apparently widespread mistaken impression that to improve in the rankings, a department must hire in the M&E areas, it is surely worth noting that this dramatic leap forward resulted from three senior appointments (one in ethics, one in political philosophy, and one in the history of early modern philosophy), one junior appointment (in ancient philosophy), and a cognate appointment in the Law School (in legal philosophy).  To be sure, Yale has a strong cluster of mid-career philosophers in areas like epistemology and philosophy of language (as well as ancient and early modern) whose rising profiles no doubt also helped.  (And this move into the 'top ten' did not reflect the recent appointment of Joshua Knobe from North Carolina.)

The mistaken impression mentioned above arose, I think, from a misreading of the study of PGR results conducted by the sociologist Kieran Healy a couple of years ago.  Healy did find that, all else being equal, one got more mileage, generally, from appointing in, e.g., philosophy of mind than history of philosophy, but he clearly did not find that appointing in other areas does not affect a department's overall ranking.  And when, of course, the historian or ethicist is far more distinguished than an available philosopher of mind, it is unsurprising that hiring the former has more of an effect on the outcome than hiring the latter.

Part of what I believe is also going on in the case of Yale is that, like NYU, it has pursued a strategy of breadth--developing strength in the M&E areas broadly construed, but also in the history of philosophy (especially ancient and early modern) and in value theory--which results in strong scores from a wide range of philosophers with diverse areas of specialization. 

Yale is, in any case, now in its strongest position in about fifty years!

Here are some of the other big upward movements since 2006 in the overall results:

University of California, Berkeley:  from 12th to 9th

City University of New York Graduate Center:  from 23rd to 15th

Indiana University, Bloomington:  from 27th to 23rd

University of Colorado, Boulder:  from 32nd to 26th

Washington University, St. Louis:  from 39th to 30th

Northwestern University:  from 53rd to 41st

University of Connecticut, Storrs:  from 48th to 43rd

University of Utah:  the last time ranked, several years ago, Utah was not in the top 50; this year it came in at 48th.

Among the senior hires that moved these faculties forward were philosophers working in moral and political philosophy (several), Kant, 19th-Century German philosophy, aesthetics, and medieval philosophy.  Indiana (which added Allen Wood [Kant, 19th-century German philosophy] and Rega Wood [medieval philosophy] may be particularly notable, since they also lost to retirement the distinguished logician J. Michael Dunn during this same time interval.

Other faculties saw an improved rank, though less dramatically than those noted, above.

Outside the U.S., the biggest upward movement was in the U.K., where the University of Warwick, ranked 14th in 2006, placed 9th this year.

Previews of PGR Survey Results Coming...

...this week, starting tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest.  We're still transcribing specialty area results, but the overall survey results are in.

PGR Surveys End in 2 Hours and 30 Minutes!

Over 250 philosophers have now participated in the 'overall' and specialty evaluations, and at least another two dozen in just the specialty evaluations.  All the specialty areas noted in prior posts that had had low response rates have had significant increments in the total number of evaluators over the last couple of days, for which my special thanks.   In corresponding with evaluators, I am always impressed by the care and seriousness with which they take this task.   

I will start posting some excerpts from the results next week.

Thanks again to all the philosophers who have lent their time and expertise to this round of evaluations.

PGR Surveys End Tomorrow (Friday, January 9) at Noon (Central Standard Time in the U.S.)

As of this morning, 214 philosophers have completed the "overall" evaluations plus one or more specialties, while an additional two to three dozen (I haven't tallied it precisely) philosophers have completed evaluations in their areas of specialization only.  Thanks to everyone for their time and conscientious efforts.  I will begin posting some previews of the results next week, and the new PGR should be on line by early February.

Reminder: PGR Surveys End This Friday at Noon Central Standard Time!

We're now approaching 200 evaluators (many thanks!), but we are definitely in need of more evaluators in some of the specialty areas, where your vote will count even more!  Those areas with 10 or fewer respondents so far include:   Philosophy of Religion; Philosophy of Action; Philosophy of Physics; Philosophy of Biology; Philosophy of Social Science; Decision, Rational Choice & Game Theory; Mathematical Logic; Philosophy of Mathematics; Applied Ethics; Philosophy of Law; Philosophy of Art; Medieval Philosophy; Early Modern Philosophy:  17th Century; History of Analytic Philosophy; Feminist Philosophy; American Pragmatism; Chinese Philosophy.

We've had especially good response rates so far (compared to 2006) in Philosophy of Language (34 votes cast), Metaphysics (36 votes cast), General Philosophy of Science (24 votes cast), Ethics (35 votes cast), Political Philosophy (23 votes cast), and 19th-Century Continental Philosophy (17 votes cast), among others.

May I remind evaluators to review their scores once they are in the "Completed" section of the survey, where they will be organized by "Overall" score.  This will afford you an opportunity to see whether you've been consistent by your lights in assigning scores.

Please also see the earlier posting for some important bits of advice about the surveys.

Reminder: PGR Surveys End a Week from Tomorrow!

The PGR surveys end on Friday, January 9 at noon Chicago time (Central Standard Time in the U.S.):  that's 1 pm in New York, 10 am in Los Angeles, 6 pm in London, and some time in the early morning hours of Saturday, January 10 in Sydney.

Many thanks to the 150 philosophers who have already completed some or all of the surveys as of the morning of January 1, 2009:  Roger Ariew, Lynne Rudder Baker, Jose Bermudez, Christopher Bobonich, Bill Brewer, Iain Thomson, Peter Carruthers, David Chalmers, Ruth Chang, Andy Egan, Jonathan Dancy, Michael Della Rocca, Dan Devereux, Michael Devitt, Paul Katsafanas, James Dreier, Julia Driver, Gerald Dworkin, Marc Ereshefsky, Gail Fine, John Martin Fischer, Berys Gaut, Tamar Gendler, Paul Guyer, Quassim Cassam, Gilbert Harman, William Harper, Aaron Zimmerman, Christopher Hitchcock, Brad Hooker, Brad Inwood, Terence Irwin, Robin Jeshion, Jim Joyce, John Kearns, Sean Kelly, Jeffrey King, Brian Leftow, Barry Loewer, Peter Ludlow, Penelope Maddy, Stephen Mulhall, Alan Nelson, Timothy O'Connor, Alex Oliver, David Papineau, George Pappas, Laurie Paul, Derk Peereboom, Peter Poellner, Huw Price, Graham Priest, Michael Rea, C.D.C. Reeve, Arthur Ripstein, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Michael Rosen, Alexander Rosenberg, Nathan Salmon, Jonathan Schaffer, Dan Kaufman, Ted Sider, Alison Simmons, Brian Skyrms, Nicholas Smith, Ernest Sosa, Jason Stanley, Georgia Warnke, Stephen Stich, Eleonore Stump, Michael Tye, Michelle Kosch, Eric Watkins, Ralph Wedgwood, Robert Wilson, Jonathan Wolff, Stephen Yablo, Christopher Gauker, Taylor Carman, Zoltan Szabo, Tad Schmaltz, Jane Heal, Peter Kail, John Dupre, Paul Noordhof, Gregory Currie, Daniel Nolan, Robert Stern, Julian Young, Craig Callender, Jonathan Cohen, Matthew Kramer, Ram Neta, Kathrin Koslicki, Juan Comesana, Jennifer Lackey, Jon Kvanvig, Alfred Mele, James Bohman, W.J. Waluchow, William Edmundson, Peter Vallentyne, David Braun, Aldo Antonelli, Robert Talisse, Duncan Pritchard, Hud Hudson, Michael Strevens, Michael Lynch, Richard Fumerton, Patrick Greenough, Jeffrey Barrett, Robert Stainton, Berit Brogaard, Hilary Kornblith, Howard Sankey, Lawrence Sklar, Adrian Moore, Michael McKenna, Manuel Vargas, Thomas Carson, Allan Silverman, Ron Mallon, Daniel Rothschild, Jeremy Fantl, Eric Swanson, Mark Schroeder, Jennifer Saul, Peter Kail, Ken Gemes, John Norton, Edouard Machery, Alan Nelson, Roger Crisp, John Tasioulas, P.J. Ivanhoe, Andrew Williams, Dennis Patterson, David Sedley, Thomas Johansen, Allan Silverman, Jeff Brower, Robert Pasnau, Steven Nadler, Lisa Shapiro, Stephen Houlgate, Cheryl Misak.

I hope those of you who have received invitations but not yet completed the surveys will consider doing so in the remaining week.

PGR Update

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 18 (for the benefit of those who may have missed it)

The following e-mail has gone out to evaluators; I'm also pasting it below, though correcting the bit about the time zones (which I messed up in the original, sorry folks!):

First:  at the request of a number of you, we will extend the deadline for completing the survey to noon on Friday, January 9.  That will be noon Chicago time, which would be 1 pm in, for example, New York City, 10 am in Los Angeles California, I believe 5 or 6 pm in London, and sometime in the early hours of the morning of Saturday in Australia.  I hope this makes it easier for more of you to participate in the surveys.

Second:  Please remember to click on "submit information" every 20 or 25 minutes.  You can then go back into the survey quite easily.  But the system automatically logs people off after awhile (longer than 25 minutes), and any scores entered will be lost if you have not clicked 'submit information.'  And remember that once you 'submit information,' the faculties you have scored will be moved to the bottom of the survey page (under "Completed"), ordered based on the 'overall' score you assigned.  You can then review your scores and adjust them as you see fit (though, again, remember to click 'submit information' every 20 or 25 minutes).

Third:  there have been some corrections and additions since the start of the survey to faculties #24, 35, 43, and 99.  Anyone who has scored these faculties either 'overall' or in 'specialty' areas may want to quickly revisit the scores in the event these changes would affect your assessment. 

Fourth:  Some evaluators have asked about the evidential standard on which they should base their evaluations.   Evaluators take different approaches.  I do encourage everyone to print out the full faculty lists and review them in hard copy before beginning.  Some evaluators google faculty and department homepages to review more detailed profiles of the faculty.   Others proceed in the evaluation on the basis of those faculty whose work they know best.  Some choose only to evaluate faculties in their area of specialization, and not overall.  If a faculty is one you would recommend (or not recommend) to a student considering graduate school, then you should feel comfortable evaluating it here.  Remember that every evaluator has only imperfect and partial information, and it is precisely the point of a survey of hundreds of philosophers, representing many different specialties, to aggregate this imperfect information to produce a more informative picture than any individual could on his or her own.   So do not set the evidential standard for an evaluation unreasonably high and bear in mind that a central point of this exercise is to correct for the fact that no one of us has perfect information about any faculty

Evaluators should e-mail me with any questions.  Also, please note that everyone who participated in 2006 should have received an invitation this round.  Two people, wisely, contacted me after not receiving an invitation, and it turned out there had been an email address error.  So if you were an evaluator in 2006, and have not received a 2008 invite, please feel free to contact me as well.

About 100 philosophers have already completed some or all of the survey, for which my sincere thanks.

RAE and PGR

Some interesting analysis of the new RAE results and the 2006 PGR results for the UK.

2008 Research Assessment Exercise in UK is Out

The philosophy results are here.  I confess I still don't know what they mean, though the matter is under review!  Bear in mind, of course, that RAE results are always backwards-looking:  so, e.g., St. Andrews was getting full credit for Crispin Wright (who is now mostly at NYU).  Comments from UK philosophers (and others) welcome.  Signed comments only.

ADDENDUM:  I should confess to being a bit facetious, above.  Here's a quick primer about what the chart means:  4* is the highest mark for submitted research, and it's down from there.  The number under each column is the percentage of submitted work by each faculty that received the score in question.  So, e.g., UCL submitted a higher percentage of work getting the highest score than Oxford, but Oxford submitted a lot more such work because, of course, it's a bigger faculty.  As a measure of per capita quality of research output, this is probably quite instructive (putting aside certain weirdnesses:  e.g., how could Middlesex rate above Southampton, both programs that emphasize post-Kantian Continental philosophy?  It makes no sense).  But what it means for a student choosing graduate programs?  Harder to say.   The list of philosophy evaluators:  Alexander Bird (Bristol), Ruth Chadwick (Cardiff), Roger Crisp (Oxford), Jonathan Dancy (Reading), Nicholas Davey (Dundee), R.A. Duff (Stirling), Katherine Hawley (St. Andrews), Joanna Hodge (Manchester Metropolitan), Christopher Hookway (Sheffield), Stephen Houlgate (Warwick), Peter Lamarque (York), Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds), E.J. Lowe (Durham), Mike Martin (UCL), Suzanne Stern-Gillet (Bolton), Alan Weir (Glasgow).  Lots of good philosophers here, though far fewer than participate in PGR surveys of course.  But the real surprise is the weak representation for Continental philosophy, except for Houlgate in 19th-century.  Where are Poellner, Janaway, Finlayson, Martin, Han-Pile, Geuss, S. Gardner, Stern?

UPDATE (Dec. 17, 7 am Chicago time):  A U.K. philosopher writes:

One thing that should be borne in mind is that the GPA average [see Professor Otsuka's comment, below, containing the average scores] doesn't take account of the overall proportion of staff eligible for inclusion who were actually included. So Department A can get a higher GPA than Department B by submitting fewer eligible staff as "research active". Previous RAEs have included data on this, but this time there was a big mix up and they eventually decided not to include it for legal reasons I can't quite understand. I suspect this may account for some of the stranger looking results on the GPA list.

It appears, for example, that Oxford submitted all their staff this time around--including, I take it, overworked tutorial fellows who probably have little opportunity to publish.  I'm also told that St. Andrews included the quarter-time staff at the Arche Research Center there, i.e., philosophers like Jason Stanley, Graham Priest, and Stewart Shapiro, among others.

To Those Participating in the PGR Surveys: Please Make Sure to Click "Submit Information" Every 20 Minutes or So!

If you don't hit "submit information" periodically (every 20 minutes to be safe), the scores entered will be lost.  I'm sorry about confusion on this.  The system automatically logs someone out (not after 20 minutes), so even though the information on the screen remains, the system is no longer recording the data.  We became aware of this problem the first two days, and so extended the amount of time before automatic log-off--but, to be safe, please "submit information" at regular 20-minute intervals.

New "National Research Council" Ranking of Grad Programs Across All Fields Due Out in February

And judging from this article, it is likely to be, unlike prior iterations, much less useful, and not simply because of the lag time between data collection and publication (at least two years, maybe more).  All indications are that the NRC planning committee was captured by interest groups representing smaller universities, who pushed 'per capita' measures, for the obvious reasons (one superstar on a faculty of 15 is worth a lot more than 1 superstar on a faculty of 30).   Here's a taste of what to expect:

Kuh provided new details on how the NRC is constructing three “supplemental measures” that will be both part of the main rankings and available individually. Although she called them “supplemental,” Kuh said that they are actually “essential measures” for doctoral programs. They are scholarly productivity, student outcomes and support and diversity.

It's unclear whether these factors will be alagamated, or presented separately; if the former, then the overall result will be as meaningless as a U.S. News ranking of law or medical schools or colleges based on a dozen different, and incommensurable factors.

In each of these cases, data will support the rankings, but faculty surveys have been used to weight the relative importance of different factors that make up the analyses. While the scholarly productivity measure is closest to the values that shape the overall ranking, Kuh stressed that all of these measures matter. “The quality of doctoral programs is not just about the scholarly productivity and scholarly recognition of program faculty,” she said.

Of course, in philosophy, we went through a variation on this nonsense during the Heckling campaign seven years ago:  on the one hand, everyone knows that the scholarly distinction of the faculty is central, but it can be a defeasible reason for choosing a program under particular circumstances, as when the faculty are disengaged from instruction and mentoring.  But we have no way of measuring that, nor does the NRC.

For each subcategory, there are further subcategories:

• For scholarly productivity: Average publications per faculty member, average citations per publication, grants per faculty member, awards per faculty member.
• For student support and outcomes: Percentage of graduate students with full support, average cohort completing program in six years, average time to degree, job placement of students, and availability of outcomes data.
• For diversity: Percentage of professors from underrepresented minority groups, percentage of faculty members who are women, percentage of students who are from underrepresented minority groups, percentage of students who are female and percentage of students who are international.

There will be some definition shifts based on discipline. For example, on the measure of percentage of entering cohorts finishing within six years, the measure for the humanities will be eight years. Then, for each subsection of the subcategory, faculty surveys are being used to weight the various factors. So under scholarly productivity, for example, faculty members in the sciences are counting grants as a much larger share than are humanities professors.

The questions Friday didn’t challenge the importance of any of the categories, but raised concerns about how they are being measured. One dean said that her agriculture science professors were bothered by the idea that grants are being counted by their number, without regard to their quality, importance or size. So a faculty member who receives $1,000 from a local agricultural producer to study some local problem is counted the same way as a faculty member who pulls down a large, peer reviewed grant from a prestigious national agency. The dean said that there was “a lot of angst” in some disciplines over such apparent flaws in the methodology.

Another dean raised a question about how success is measured in the diversity categories, and was told that the greater the diversity, the greater the score. In many of the diversity categories, that may make sense, and many departments have relatively low percentages, for example, of minority faculty members. But he said that the international students ranking was potentially deceptive under this system. The dean said that any graduate program that doesn’t attract any foreign students probably deserves to go down in the rankings. But he said that a program where 95 percent of the students are international isn’t necessarily better than one with 40 percent — and in fact is quite likely a worse program.

One could, of course, mulitply the worries about applying these kinds of criteria to philosophy programs.

Meanwhile, the wickedly funny, self-proclaimed "cranky jerk" philosopher notes regarding the impending release in January of the new PGR:

What joy. For not only will undergraduates not be at the mercy of their (often clueless or biased) professors' impressions of what's what and who's who in the profession, but the Philosophy blogosphere will once again be alive with petty, misinformed, idiotic, self-serving whining about the PGR, all dressed up in the guise of righteous indignation.

Now, in addition, the misinformed and self-serving can also refer to the NRC, in the event that a department fares better there than in the PGR.  We'll look at such cases when they arise; I strongly suspect that the explanation will be traceable to some of the peculiarities of the new NRC exercise noted above.  S

In any case, since more real information is better than less, one may hope that the NRC report will, in the end, be more informative than this preview of its methodology suggests it will be.

PGR Surveys Have Begun

E-mailed invitations to participate in the new PGR surveys began going out this morning.  More will go out through tomorrow, at least, as we fix e-mail errors and the like.  Please contact me if you encounter any problems with the survey or have questions.

PGR Update

It looks like we are on track for the invitation e-mails for the new surveys to go out on Monday, December 8.  The survey will run through Friday, January 2.  We have a total of 469 nominated evaluators, though if past experience is any indication, not all the e-mail invites will go through successfully, but the vast, vast majority will.  A new feature this year (for which I'm grateful to Ted Ressell, the excellent IT person here at Chicago) will permit evaluators, after saving their scores, to then see the faculties re-ordered based on the 'overall' scores awarded (so, e.g., one will get a list starting with all the faculties the evaluator gave a 5, then the faculties that got a 4.5, then those that got a 4, and so on).  Evaluators then have the option of revising the scores.  This will, I think, be a powerful corrective for any order or other similar biases in the initial evaluations, and it is a feature that a number of evaluators have asked for over the years.

Faculties to be Added to the PGR Survey

The Advisory Board has voted on those faculties that requested inclusion in the new PGR surveys.  Those that got either a majority or a significant minority of support (Board members in some cases gave particular reasons for the support), as well as those with the most support in Australasia and the U.K., will be added.  They are:

University of South Carolina

University of Exeter

University of Oklahoma, Norman

University of Cincinnati

University of Kansas

St. Louis University

University of Otago

York University, Toronto

I shall utililze the faculty lists that the departmetns, in each instance, supplied me for purposes of Advisory Board consideration.

It now looks like the PGR surveys will begin on Monday, December 7--more details later this week.

Comparative Information on Stipends/Benefits for Grad Students

This appears to be a useful database, though bear in mind that even at schools with low average stipends there may be particular fellowships that are quite generous.  There may also be particular departments whose averages are much higher than the university norm.

PGR Update

Within the next 24 hours, the faculty lists will be finalized (post corrections here) and, with luck, the on-line survey will begin by the end of the week, and run for about two weeks.  Faculties that the Advisory Board has voted to add to the survey will be announced here tomorrow.  Remember that even those not added to the survey are eligible for inclusion in the specialty rankings based either on 2006 results and/or input from the Advisory Board.

If all goes as planned, Blackwell will have the new PGR on-line by the end of January.  I may preview some results on this site earlier in January as well.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed helpful feedback and information.

Penultimate Draft Faculty Lists for 2008 Surveys: Last Chance for Additions/Corrections

Here is the draft list, based on all the feedback received since this morning (Nov. 23):Download pgr_faculty_lists_2008.rtf .  My sincere thanks to the dozens of philosophers who have already submited information.

The Advisory Board is presently voting on about a dozen faculties that have requested inclusion in the survey.  Since I have faculty lists for those programs already, those that the Board votes to add will be included.  I will post on the blog a list of those departments the Advisory Board votes to include.

A couple of issues it might help to clarify, before soliciting any final corrections to the lists:

"Emeritus faculty still doing some teaching and supervision" means emeritus faculty on multi-year contracts that requires them to teach graduate students.  It does *not* mean emeritus faculty who are hanging around and willing to talk to students.  I would appreciate information (you can e-mail me with this) about listings that are incorrect on this score, and I will follow up with individual departments.

"Cognate" faculty have to be faculty *at the university* (not faculty elsewhere) who are actually willing and able to work with graduate students in philosophy:  e.g., serve on dissertation committees, teach pertinents courses that philosophy students take, and so on.  I am concerned that some schools are padding the cognate lists, so let me observe that padding the list is almost certainly not helpful:  a long list of names most philosophers have not heard of, or even specialists may not have heard of, is likely to be interpreted as a weakness, not a strength.

"Adjunct" faculty at a university are *not* listed.  (On the other hand, some departments list faculty at their university who are 'cognates' as adjuncts:  they are included on the cognate list.)

Sydney and the ANU have large numbers of multi-year post-docs:  they are listed as part-time faculty (as before), but with a parenthetical "post-doc" after the name.  These faculty are not permanent members of staff, and in many cases, are not in residence for the entire academic year, or in residence each year.  Part-time with the post-doc qualification seems to be the best way to incorporate this information given the categories that apply everywhere else.  Outside Australia, post-docs are not listed, since their status is usually much more temporary and their role different than at the Australian universities with Federation Fellowship monies.

A few other points that deserve special notice:

1.  Departments are listed alphabetically by name and region (U.S., Canada, U.K., Australasia).

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.  As noted, the Advisory Board is now voting on other possible inclusions.

3.  As in 2006, faculties not included in the survey will still be included in the specialty rankings where appropriate, based either on the 2006 results (assuming no major changes since then) or on the judgment of the Advisory Board.

4.  The category of "affiliated" faculty has been replaced with the cateagory "Cognate Faculty and Philosophers in Other Units," for reasons discussed on the blog this past summer.  Feedback on whether "cognate" faculty are really available for work with philosophy PhD students is especially welcome.

5.  Also very helpful would be information on faculty who are slated to retire at the end of the 2008-09 academic year or who are on a phased or scheduled retirement program of some kind.

7.  Only faculty at the affected program may post corrections, below.  DO NOT E-MAIL ME CORRECTIONS.  Please post them below, so that efforts will not be duplicated.  Occasionally, there are questions that require some discretion in terms of how to count faculty; for those purposes, faculty may e-mail me.  ONLY SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED BELOW.

The faculty lists will be finalized by Monday, December 1, and we hope to begin the on-line survey shortly thereafter.

Draft Faculty Lists for New PGR Surveys for 08-09

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 27--LISTS NOT UPDATED SINCE OCTOBER 27:  PLEASE POST ADDITIONS/CORRECTIONS IN COMMENTS BELOW.  THESE LISTS WILL BE FINALIZED WITHIN THE WEEK.  THANKS FOR ALL THE FEEDBACK AND HELP.

I'm now feeling more hopeful that we will be able to complete a new set of PGR surveys for 2008 later this fall.  Accordingly, I'm making available a draft list of faculties for review and correction:  Download pgr_faculty_lists_2008.rtf

A few points that deserve special notice:

1.  Departments are listed alphabetically by name and region (U.S., Canada, U.K., Australasia).

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.

3.  If your faculty is not included, and you would like it to be part of the survey, please send me a faculty list (organized like those in the document, above) and I will submit it to the Advisory Board to vote on inclusion.  The criterion for inclusion is that the faculty seems to have a chance to rank in the "top 50" in the US, "the top 15" in the UK, "the top 5" in Australasia, or the "top 5" in Canada.  (In 2006, all departments with scores of 2.2 or higher were ranked--the cut-off for 2008 will likely be similar.)

4.  As in 2006, faculties not included in the survey will still be included in the specialty rankings where appropriate, based either on the 2006 results (assuming no major changes since then) or on the judgment of the Advisory Board.

5.  The category of "affiliated" faculty has been replaced with the cateagory "Cognate Faculty and Philosophers in Other Units," for reasons discussed on the blog this past summer.  Feedback on whether "cognate" faculty are really available for work with philosophy PhD students is especially welcome.

6.  Also very helpful would be information on faculty who are slated to retire at the end of the 2008-09 academic year.

7.  Only faculty at the affected program may post corrections, below.  DO NOT E-MAIL ME CORRECTIONS.  Please post them below, so that efforts will not be duplicated.  Occasionally, there are questions that require some discretion in terms of how to count faculty; for those purposes, faculty may e-mail me.  ONLY SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE POSTED BELOW.

With luck, we'll finalize the faculty lists in the next few weeks, and be in a position to conduct the surveys by early December, with results on-line come January.  That, in any case, is the optimistic scenario we're aiming for.

Thanks for your help.

Applying Twice to the Same Programs?

An undergraduate student writes:

I'm in a small and unrenowned state school, with wonderful but unrenowned philosophy faculty. I've been given the impression that, not coming from a typical feeder school, I'll need to prove myself outstanding in every way to catch the attention of the top phil mind / phil cog sci programs. My grades are top notch (4.0), my GREs are good (1600), and I expect strong rec. letters--though the signatures on the bottom of most probably won't have the sort of cachet that moves mountains. However, I fear my writing sample is not going to be where it needs to be this time around.

And so the short of it: If I apply to my top programs this year and meet disappointment, have I put myself at a disadvantage trying again with those same programs next year, with a more professional piece of writing? Is it poor form to present myself twice to beleaguered admissions committees? Finally, if I put off applying anyway this year, and pursue an overseas / non-academic opportunity, does this weigh against me at all? In other words, do philosophy B.A.s go stale in the same manner as philosophy Ph.D.'s?

I've gotten many questions like this over the years, so this student's situation is not anomalous I suspect.  Philosophy BAs certainly don't go "stale" in the same way as PhDs, though someone too many years out from undergrad will likely present the question, 'Does this person remember enough philosophy?  Is s/he serious about philosophy?"  But this student's question is more specific, and here it would be helpful to hear from philosophers with experience in admissions.  How do "repeat" applicants fare?  My anecdotal impression is that there is a fair amount of turnover in admissions committees, but not total turnover:  in other words, there is an institutional memory in the form of faculty who are on admissions committees several years in a row.  If that anecdotal evidence is reliable, then it's fair to say that applying two years in a row back-to-back is not a great strategy.  Comments?  I'd ask faculty to post under their own names, but students with experience may post anonymously, as long as there is an e-mail and IP number I can verify (neither will appear).  Thanks.

Which AOS's and AOC's Are in Demand?

An undergraduate in Britain writes:

I am a final year undergraduate student at the University of [name omitted] in the UK and am currently looking in to graduate schools. One of the factors which I am considering is which departments are strong in AOSs and AOCs that are marketable. However to answer this question I need to know which AOSs and AOCs are marketable. I read your article in the Chronicle Careers ten years ago and found it very interesting--for example the fact that Applied Ethics has an almost one to one ration of jobs to candidates.

My question is this: Which AOSs and AOCs have the most favourable ratios of jobs to candidates? If there were a ranking these I would find that very useful. Is there a reliable way of finding out (are there surveys) or do we have to rely on anecdotal evidence?

Of course I understand that it is somewhat perverse to go to graduate school and then choose your field based on job prospects. However it still seems like the information would be useful. For example students who have more than one main interest and are not sure which they prefer, the information could tip the scale in one direction. Even more so if they are choosing between graduate schools based on their specialty rankings, years before they have to write their dissertations. Similarly it could be useful for choosing between equally attractive sounding courses at masters level, for AOCs.

Please do not feel obliged to give me a detailed answer or to post this on your blog. I would however very much appreciate it if you could at least point me in the direction of where I could find some answers to my question (perhaps it has been addressed before). For example, is Applied Ethics still so marketable (I really like Applied Ethics)? 

Comments are open; please post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

Any Departments Wishing to be Included in the New PGR Surveys

About a dozen departments have contacted me so far asking to be considered for inclusion in the new PGR surveys.  (The draft faculty lists are here, and see the comments for corrections, many of which have not yet been incorporated.)   If any other departments wish to be included, please e-mail me a current faculty list in a form conforming to those on the draft faculty lists.  The Advisory Board will begin voting by the middle of next week on which additional programs to include in the survey.

As noted in the earlier posting accompanying the draft faculty lists:

2.  All departments that ranked in 2006 are included here (with the exception of Florida, which has suspended its PhD program).  Faculties surveyed in 2006 that did not score high enough to rank are not included this year, unless changes in the interim seem likely to alter that result.  Several faculties not surveyed recently (or ever before) are included in this round:  Nebraska, UC Santa Cruz, Utah.

3.  If your faculty is not included, and you would like it to be part of the survey, please send me a faculty list (organized like those in the document, above) and I will submit it to the Advisory Board to vote on inclusion.  The criterion for inclusion is that the faculty seems to have a chance to rank in the "top 50" in the US, "the top 15" in the UK, "the top 5" in Australasia, or the "top 5" in Canada.  (In 2006, all departments with scores of 2.2 or higher were ranked--the cut-off for 2008 will likely be similar.)

Faculties not included in the overall ranking will still be ranked in the 'specialty' categories, using the 2006 results and/or based on the judgment of Advisory Board members with pertinent expertise.

Faculties considering asking for inclusion should bear in mind that PGR evaluators are, in general, a 'tough' group:  even the best departments in the Anglophone world fail to score a 5.0, and many evaluators rank departments "0" (i.e., inadequate for a PhD program) without much hesitation.  We certainly want to make sure that the overall rankings do not omit programs that would perform competitively, but there may also be costs for departments in being formally evaluated in this process.  Again, even if a department is not included in the overall surveys, we will make every effort to insure fair representation of programs with particular areas of excellence in the specialty rankings.

Thinking About Graduate School in Philosophy?

David Brink (UC San Diego) has posted some quite sensible advice on-line that covers the main issues for a prospective grad student.

UPDATE:  A graduate student writes:

One thing I noticed is that Brink claims that having a Ph.D. is necessary for full-time employment at a Community College.  While I do not personally know anyone with only an MA who has a tenure-track job (or the equivalent, as some CC's don't have a tenure system) at a Community College, I often notice that when CC's advertise full-time faculty positions, more often than not, the advertisement says that an MA is required, while a Ph.D. is preferred but not required. For philosophers who are more interested in teaching than researching, I think it would be good to know just how good of a chance there is of someone with only an MA getting a full-time job at a Community College.

Readers:  any insights into this?