Thursday, May 24, 2007

Academic Rankings

Yesterday, my husband came across this rankings system for academic graduate programs. I'm wondering if any of you are familiar with it? I wasn't aware of it before now, but it appears to be a new rankings system. Here are the top ten graduate programs in Religious Studies in alphabetical order according to Academic Analytics. The highlighting is mine.

Religious Studies & Theology

  • Duke University
  • Emory University
  • Harvard University
  • Marquette University
  • New York University
  • Rice University
  • Union Theological Seminary - New York
  • Vanderbilt University
  • Westminster Theological Seminary
  • Yale University

  • Update 5-25-07: Patrick McCullough sent this information and links to other articles about this ranking system.

    "But here I see that it measures these schools on the Academic output of its faculty (they call it the "Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index"). Here's a Chronicle article about their method and how they came to be."


    2 comments:

    Patrick G. McCullough said...

    Interesting. I hadn't seen it. I am very skeptical of rankings in general. Sure, there are "brand name" and "top tier" schools, but it all depends on who you study with and what you're interested in. It's strange that it would combine religious studies and theology. In the "theology" category, I would (of course) put Fuller above Westminster. And what of Princeton? Notre Dame?

    But here I see that it measures these schools on the Academic output of its faculty (they call it the "Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index"). Here's a Chronicle article about their method and how they came to be.

    On the other hand, it's nice to have a different ranking system from US News & World Report out there and to have religious studies even recognized. I'm just not sure who these ranking systems are for. Who does it help? Potential graduate students? I don't think I'd base my decision of what grad schools to which to apply solely on the productivity of its faculty.

    April DeConick said...

    Patrick,

    Thanks for this. I am going to move this to the main blog.