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Ranking Doctoral Programs by Placement: A NewMethod

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2007

Benjamin M. Schmidt  and
Matthew M. Chingos
Benjamin M. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Matthew M. Chingos
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

While many bemoan the increasingly large role rankings play inAmerican higher education, their prominence and importance areindisputable. Such rankings have many different audiences, rangingfrom prospective undergraduates or graduate students, to foundationsand government funders, to university administrators identifyingstrengths and weaknesses of their school. This diverse audiencenecessarily has varying hopes for what “quality” is measured inschool rankings, and different uses for the rankings themselves. Butalthough there are currently a wide variety of ways to assessgraduate school quality, most existing surveys have recognizedfailings that compromise their usefulness to at least one of thesedifferent constituencies.The authorsextend their thanks to William Bowen, Derek Bruff, JonathanCole, Philip Katz, Gary King, Robert Townsend, HarrietZuckerman, and two anonymous PS reviewers fortheir valuable comments on and criticisms of earlier drafts ofthis paper.

Information

Type
THE PROFESSION
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 523 - 529
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

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