Philosopher Gil Hersch at Virginia Tech has put together a metric for evaluating the quality of placement into PhD programs from MA programs in philosophy. It covers the period 2019-2023, and the programs with the most success in placing graduates in quality programs tracks pretty exactly the programs listed in the PGR. Professor Hersch uses the overall PGR rank as the measure of program quality, but of course sometimes a student is much better served by a program that is very strong in a specialty than overall, as Professor Hersch recognizes. Virginia Tech's own placement record is very strong, although it's worth noting it placed far fewer students in total than other strong MA programs like Northern Illinois, Georgia State, and Wisconsin/Milwaukee.
Professor Hersh asked that I invite discussion of his effort to quantify placement, so comments are open. Signed comments will be preferred, but all comments must include a valid email address, which will not appear.
