I came across some interesting aggregated data on "faculty quality" across three dozen disciplines from the 1995 study of graduate programs in the U.S. by the National Research Council. That study was based on 92-93 surveys, so it's now a good decade old. (A new NRC study will begin soon, and will likely be out in 3-4 years.) During that decade, schools like NYU, UC Irvine, and Columbia have improved; schools like Berkeley, Wisconsin, Washington, Illinois, and Johns Hopkins have fared less well. (Texas is harder to assess, which means my perception of trends elsewhere should be taken with a grain of salt. My impression is that some programs have gotten markedly stronger--examples are, most obviously, Philosophy, but also Psychology, Economics, and Mathematics--while others have stagnated or slipped [e.g., Physics, Government]. How it washes out across all fields is hard to say. Overall, my sense is there have been net gains, but this is too impressionistic to be reliable.)
Still, despite being dated, this material may be of some interest.
This aggregation of the 1995 NRC data ranked the top 20 universities based on average faculty quality across all programs, for schools with at least 15 programs evaluated. It did the same for faculty quality in the Biological Sciences, the Physical Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Arts & Humanities.
The data is here:Download file. Some comments on the data to follow later....
Recent Comments