Doctoral programs at this university are among the best in the country, according to a newly released national study, and officials said changes are coming to make them even better.
The National Research Council assessed doctoral programs from 212 universities based on data collected mostly during the 2005-2006 academic year. About 36 of this university’s doctoral programs were ranked among the top 25 in their field.
This university’s aerospace engineering, agricultural and resource economics, comparative literature, computer science, geography, linguistics, atmospheric and oceanic science, and public policy doctoral programs were among the highest rated, according to a university press release.
“It is yet another objective confirmation of the outstanding quality of graduate education and research on our campus,” graduate school Dean Charles Caramello wrote in an e-mail.
However, the new rankings drew just as much confusion as gratification because they do not give definitive numerical rankings, but rather placed universities in ranges. According to the council, ranking the programs in numerical order would be misleading because factors such as fluctuations from year to year and differences in faculty views vary greatly.
Sifting through the wealth of data will require a bit of work, university officials said.
“It seems like a complex piece of research,” women’s studies doctoral student Julie Enszer said. “It also had a very dense data gathering process … it seems overall it’s an important study that gives us some information on how we can improve our graduate programs by comparing it to others in the country.”
According to Caramello, the graduate school is collaborating with the provost’s office and institutional research, planning and assessment office to examine and decipher the meaning behind the measurements.
“We’re analyzing it and trying to make sense of it,” Provost and acting university President Nariman Farvardin said. “It was just released, but it’s very exciting and promising.”
The study’s rankings are built on data collected several years ago, Caramello said the university’s doctoral programs have only flourished further and concerted efforts have been made to better recruit and support the research of the best and brightest docotral students. He added the university has conducted an extensive review of its 83 doctoral programs in the past two years.
This past spring, the university announced its intention to admit about 100 fewer doctoral students and decrease overall enrollment in doctoral programs 10 percent by 2013. Having fewer students enrolled, Caramello said, would allow them to receive greater support in terms of mentorship, advising and finances.
Graduate Student Government Vice President for Academic Affairs Jill Gribbin said the graduate school is making strides by creating new fellowships for doctoral students. For example, last semester the university extended the McNair Fellowship — a first-year financial support package with a $1,800 stipend which was previously only offered to undergraduates — to graduate students, she said.
One of the most successful doctoral fellowships thus far has been the three-year-old Flagship Fellowship program, which awards prominent doctoral students up to $40,000 in supplemental financial aid over four to five years.
Linguistics doctoral student and graduate student senator Yakov Kronrod, though he is not a Flagship Fellow himself, said he understands the effectiveness of such programs in enhancing the quality of doctoral programs.
“It’s definitely given us a lot of great Ph.D. students that we otherwise would have lost to other colleges who traditionally are seen as having better doctoral programs historically,” he said.
While Gribbin said she definitely supported new fellowships, she did not agree with the idea of enrolling fewer students. She added that some departments, such as English, need more graduate students, not less.
“If we want to maintain a high level of research success, we really need to enroll a lot of good graduate students,” she said.
Gribbin said if the university wants to effectively enhance doctoral programs, it should be done through more program-specific evaluation than sweeping, university-wide changes.
“How do you define a good doctoral program?” she said. “Is it the most papers you publish? Is it the most students who get good jobs? … I think what it comes down to is having the individual departments looking at how they can make their own programs better, because to make a very broad change and say ‘This is good for everyone’ wouldn’t work.”
Senior staff writer Lauren Redding contributed to this report. villanueva at umdbk dot com
