Reader Jeremy Davis recently asked about this old post (from 2003!), wonder what would count as the new "powerhouse departments"? Back then, I had written:
Every decade in the last half-century has seen at least one new arrival in the top ranks of the profession:
In the 1950s, it was Princeton and, less dramatically, UCLA.
In the 1960s, it was Pittsburgh, and, less dramatically, MIT and Stanford.
In the 1970s, it was Rockefeller.
In the 1980s, it was Arizona and the beginnings of Rutgers.
In the 1990s, it was Rutgers and then NYU.
Who will it be in the 2000s?
I think we can now safely say that in the 2000s, it was first North Carolina, which cracked the top ten for a period of time, though ranked 13th most recently; and then the University of Southern California (which enjoyed a period as a top 20 department in the 1980s and early 1990s), which seems now solidly ensconsed in the U.S. top ten. And in the future? I guess I would bet on some of the wealthy private universities like Washington University in St. Louis or Duke University to at least land solidly in the top twenty. A relatively small department like Brown, but one with high per capita quality, could with a few more lines make the jump to the top ten as well. Time will tell, of course.
UPDATE: A couple of readers point out that Yale should be mentioned too, since they had not been a top department since the 1950s and early 1960s.
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