...has been sent to Blackwell, and should be on-line not later than November 15. Here are a few highlights and previews, to satisfy some of the curiosity of readers and correspondents (many of whom were also evaluators--my thanks!).
This year, 266 philosophers from around the world completed the surveys and, for the first time, scored departments in the specialty areas, as well as overall. Given the nearly 50% increase in the number of evaluators, the stability in the results is striking: departments that had had significant gains or losses did, indeed, improve or decline commensurately, while faculties largely unchanged had a rank largely unchanged. The results in the specialty categories largely confirmed the excellent work of the Advisory Board on the 2002 Report, with some new additions, whose recognition is a welcome feature of the new Report.
For the first time, we standardized all the raw scores, to reflect the fact that evaluators award different mean scores, and not all evaluators score all departments. This affected some results at the margins, but only there.
The overall top 15 for the U.S. were:
1. New York University
2. Rutgers University, New Brunswick
3. Princeton University
4. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
4. University of Pittsburgh
6. Columbia University
6. Harvard University
6. Massachussetts Institute of Technology
6. Stanford University
6. University of California, Los Angeles
11. Cornell University
11. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
11. University of Notre Dame
11. University of Texas, Austin
15. University of California, Berkeley
The raw and scaled means show, however, some significant gaps between 2 and 3, and between 4 and 6. NYU appears to have pulled ahead of Rutgers primarily on the strength of its striking investment in history of philosophy--ancient, modern, and Continental--where Rutgers has lagged.
The top five in the U.K. were:
1. Oxford University
2. Cambridge University
3. University of St. Andrews
4. University College London
5. Birkbeck College, University of London
5. King's College, London
There was, as in prior years, a big gap between #1 and the others.
The top five in Canada were:
1. University of Toronto
2. University of Western Ontario
3. University of British Columbia
4. McGill University
5. University of Alberta
There was, as in prior years, a big gap between #1 and the others.
The top five in Australasia were:
1. Australian National University
2. University of Melbourne
3. University of Sydney
4. University of Auckland
5. Monash University
5. University of Queensland
There was, as in prior years, a huge gap between #1 and the others.
The biggest improvers in the overall rankings were:
Cornell University: 16th to 11th
University of Notre Dame: 14th to 11th
University of Texas, Austin: 14th to 11th
City University of New York Graduate Center: 25th to 18th
University of Southern California: 41st to 23rd
University of Maryland, College Park: 30th to 25th
University of Virginia: 42nd to 38th
Washington University, St. Louis: from not in the top 50 to 38th
University of Florida, Gainesville: from not in the top 50 to 41st
University College London from 7th to 4th in the U.K.
University of Sheffield from 10th to 7th in the U.K.
University of Nottingham from 15th to 10th in the U.K.
University of Warwick from not being ranked to 10th in the U.K.
University of Bristol from not being ranked to 14th in the U.K.
In the specialty rankings, here are the highest ranked departments (based on mean score, rounded to .5; listed alphabetically) in some select areas:
Philosophy of Language: MIT, NYU, Rutgers, UCLA, and Southern California are tops.
Philosophy of Mind: Rutgers is #1, followed by the ANU and NYU
Metaphysics: Rutgers is #1, followed by MIT, NYU, Oxford, and Notre Dame.
Epistemology: Rutgers is #1 and Oxford is #2, followed, then, by Brown, NYU, Princeton, and Notre Dame.
Normative Ethics & Moral Psychology: Harvard and Michigan are tied at the top, followed by NYU, Oxford, and North Carolina.
Political Philosophy: NYU and Oxford are tied at the top, followed by Harvard, Arizona, Michigan, and Toronto.
Philosophy of Science: Pittsburgh is #1, followed by Columbia, LSE, and UC Irvine.
Philosophy of Physics: Oxford and Pittsburgh are tied at the top, followed by Rutgers, UC Irvine, and South Carolina.
Ancient Philosophy: Oxford is #1, followed by Cambridge, Cornell, and Princeton.
Early Modern Philosophy: 17th Century: Princeton is #1, followed by Columbia, NYU, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and Michigan.
Kant and German Idealism: Chicago, Notre Dame, Penn, and Stanford are tops.
19th-Century Continental Philosophy after Hegel: Chicago, Oxford, Princeton, Texas, and Warwick are tops. (Auckland should have been tops too, in my personal judgment, but that's not how the surveys came out. Southampton, not included in the survey, was added by the Advisory Board as a noteworthy choice in this area as well.)
History of Analytic Philosophy (including Wittgenstein): Chicago, Harvard, Oxford, and the St. Andrews/Stirling Joint Program were tops.
Many more specialty areas, and many more programs in each of them, were, of course, evaluated. Full results will be available at www.philosophicalgourmet.com by November 15.
