Ph.D. Program Rankings
While we do not have separate departments, we have been included in published surveys and studies that rank departments and programs. Each study uses a different methodology, giving somewhat different rankings. Here is a summary for Caltech's social sciences. More details are provided below.
Ranking Field When Where Criterion/Methodology
------- ----- ---- ----- ---------------------
1 Political Science 1998 PS Quality adjusted publications per capita
3 Business and Economics 1998 Science Watch Citations per paper
6 Political Science 1996 PS Publications
10 Microeconomics 1998 US News Survey of department heads
8 Economics 1996 Economic Inquiry Pages per capita in top 36 journals
6 Economics 1995 Nat'l Research Council Survey of top department heads
PS: Political Science and Politics (December 1998), published by the American Political Science Association, ranked us number 1 in Political Science in terms of research performance in a recent study covering 1986-1996. The study calculated a quality-weighted total publication score divided by the average number of full-time faculty over the period of 1986-1996. The results were:
1 Caltech
2 SUNY Stony Brook
3 Rochester
4 Iowa
5 Houston
6 Carnegie Mellon
7 Michigan State
8 Texas A&M
9 Stanford
10 Georgia
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a study conducted by Science Watch, the research division of ISI (publishers of the Social Science Citation Index). The study "calculated (in 21 fields, each defined by a discrete set of ISI-indexed journals) the citations-per-paper (impact) score for each university, based on papers published and cited between 1993 and 1997." The results of all of this in the Economics & Business category yielded the following ranking.
1 University of Chicago
2 MIT
3 Caltech
4 Yale
5 Harvard
6 Northwestern
7 Stanford
8 University of Pennsylvania
9 Michigan
10 University of California, Berkeley
The Political Science faculty at Caltech has been highly ranked in a recent study of productivity and impact. In an article in PS: Political Science & Politics (December 1996, Volume XXIX, Number 4), published by the American Political Science Association, the Caltech department was ranked 16th in terms of a measure of overall impact (through publications in the top journals and citations) of faculty and graduate students. When this measure is adjusted for size, (i.e., divided by number of faculty, 9, and graduate program size, 19) we rank 6th. The adjusted ranking is:
Size
Adjusted Faculty Unadjusted
Rank Department Size Rank
---- ---------- ---- ----
1 Rochester 18 6
2 Stanford 28 3
3 Harvard 48 1
4 Yale 29 4
5 Michigan 44 2
6 Caltech 9 16
7 Berkeley 41 5
8 Iowa 22 14
9 Indiana 27 8
10 Minnesota 30 9
US News and World Report published their 1998 rankings of based on questionnaires that were sent to department heads and directors of graduate studies at schools that had granted a total of five or more doctorates in each discipline during five-year period 1991 through 1995. Caltech ranked 10th in area of microeconomics, 14th in industrial organization, 14th in public finance, and 14th overall.
At the moment the results are still on the web here. Here is a partial summary.
Overall Economics Rankings
Rank/School Avg. reputation score
----------- ------------------------
1. Harvard University 4.9
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.9
1. Stanford University 4.9
4. Princeton University 4.8
4. University of California--Berkeley 4.8
4. University of Chicago 4.8
7. Yale University 4.7
8. Northwestern University 4.5
9. University of Pennsylvania 4.3
10. University of Minnesota--Twin Cities 4.1
10. University of Wisconsin--Madison 4.1
12. University of California--Los Angeles 4.0
12. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 4.0
14. California Institute of Technology 3.9
14. Columbia University 3.9
14. University of California--San Diego 3.9
14. University of Rochester 3.9
18. Cornell University 3.8
19. Carnegie Mellon University 3.7
19. Duke University 3.7
Economics Specialties: Microeconomics
1. Harvard University (MA)
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Stanford University (CA)
4. University of Chicago
5. Princeton University (NJ)
6. Northwestern University (IL)
7. University of California--Berkeley
8. Yale University (CT)
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. California Institute of Technology
11. University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
12. University of California--Los Angeles
13. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
14. New York University
14. University of California--San Diego
16. University of Wisconsin--Madison
17. University of Rochester (NY)
Economics Specialties: Industrial Organization
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Stanford University (CA)
3. Northwestern University (IL)
4. Harvard University (MA)
5. University of California--Berkeley
5. University of Chicago
7. Yale University (CT)
8. Princeton University (NJ)
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
11. New York University
11. University of California--Los Angeles
13. University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
13. University of Wisconsin--Madison
15. University of Texas--Austin
16. Boston University
16. California Institute of Technology
18. University of California--San Diego
18. University of Florida
Economics Specialties: Public Finance
1. Harvard University (MA)
2. Stanford University (CA)
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. University of California--Berkeley
5. Princeton University (NJ)
6. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
7. University of Chicago
8. University of Wisconsin--Madison
9. University of Pennsylvania
9. Yale University (CT)
11. University of Maryland--College Park
12. Northwestern University (IL)
13. Boston University
14. California Institute of Technology
14. George Mason University (VA)
14. Indiana University--Bloomington
14. University of California--Los Angeles
18. Carnegie Mellon University (PA)
Economic Inquiry, the journal of the Western Economics Association has a tradition of publishing departmental rankings based on objerctive crtieria such as publications and citation. In the April 1996 issue, L. C. Scott and P. M. Mithias published an article titled "Trends in Rankings of Economics Departments in the U.S.: An Update" (volume 34, pages 378--400). They ranked departments on the basis of standardized pages counts from 1984--1993 for what they consider to be the top thirty-six ecoomics journals. They rank departments separately on the total page count and the per capita page count. Here is an excerpt from their Table IV.
Departmental Stock Rankings Based on Pages per Faculty Member
Rank School Pages/Faculty # of Faculty Total Page Rank
---- ------ ------------- ------------ ---------------
1 MIT 71.5 36 1
2 Princeton 52 43 3
3 Penn 46.3 46 4
4 Yale 44 48 5
5 Northwestern 42.1 40 7
6 Carnegie-Mellon 41.3 34 9
7 Minnesota 41.3 29 13
8 Caltech 41 12 56
9 Chicago 39.9 30 15
10 Rochester 39.9 30 16
11 Brown 39.3 24 24
12 Harvard 38.3 64 2
In 1995, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences published a report titled "Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change Based on Information from 1993." They ranked a variety of Ph.D. programs in two basic ways. They conducted surveys and counted citations.
They report the results of two surveys. The first surveyed department heads at all schools, the second surveyed departments that were ranked in the top half by the first survey. They clearly included the entire social science faculty in the economics rankings, since they reported a faculty size of 23 in 1992.
The first survey ranked Caltech 19 in terms of faculty quality, and 13 in terms of effectiveness of the Ph.D. program. On the second survey of top ranked departments, the rankings rose to 17 for the faculty and 6 for the effectiveness of the Ph.D. program.
In terms of citations we ranked 31, but in citations per capita (even using the inflated faculty size), we ranked 28.