Grad Programs Moving Up In National Rankings

This fall, the National Research Council (NRC) released its first detailed study of graduate programs since 1995, and their findings repeat those reported by Academic Analytics earlier this year: Baylor's graduate programs have grown tremendously over the past decade, and many now rank among the nation's best in their fields. Of note from the two reviews:

• The sociology doctoral program, barely a decade old, ranked as high as the 18th percentile nationally; Academic Analytics' review ranked the program among the top 10 overall in books, articles and citations per faculty member.
• The doctoral program in psychology jumped from the 89th percentile in 1995 to between the 34th and 60th percentile this year. The department has secured grants from such recognizable entities as the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense and Veterans Administration.
• The religion Ph.D. program -- one of the longest running at Baylor -- ranked in the top 10 nationally in books publications, citations per publication and citations per faculty member, placing BU at the same general levels as noted programs such as Duke and North Carolina.
• The mathematics graduate program began only three years before data was gathered for this study, and had already jumped to sixth among Big 12 Conference schools by the time the survey was completed. Its students have a 100 percent success rate in job placement, with about 80 percent working in academia and the others serving in business and industry.
• Another new program, Baylor's statistics Ph.D. program ranked in the same range as Cal-Davis and Rice on faculty research and received an overall program ranking in the same range as Yale and Johns Hopkins.
• Academic Analytics ranked Baylor physics' doctoral program No. 1 nationally in the percentage of authors whose works are cited and among the top 20 in dollars per research grant.
• Baylor's doctoral program in political science -- a program too new to have been included in the NRC's study -- leads the nation in the percentage of faculty writing or editing books, according to the Academic Analytics' review.
• The philosophy doctoral program, also too new to make the NRC results, placed among Academic Analytics' top 20 nationally in total faculty scholarly productivity (publications, citations and awards) -- in just the program's fifth year of existence.