Best economics department...

<p>I have yet to find any rankings for undergrad economics programs. Can you guys help me out? I've asked a lot of people but they dont know, so Im guessing that there are not rankings, but does any one have a couple of ideas atleast? The only thing that comes to my mind when someone says economics is University of Chicago, but thats all I know, help?</p>

<p>NOT in order.............</p>

<p>Chicago
Northwestern
MIT, Stanford
All the Ivy league Universities
Top Lacs such as Williams and Amherst
Duke
UC-Berkeley, University of Virginia, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Other TOP liberal-arts-focused universities</p>

<p>from Gourman Report undergrad
MIT
Chicago
Stanford
Princeton
Harvard
Yale
U Minnesota
U Penn
U Wisc Madison
UC Brekeley
Northwestern
U Rochester
Columbia
UCLA
U Michigan Ann Arbor
Johns Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
Brown
UC San Diego
Duke
Cornell
NYU
UVA</p>

<p>US News 2006 Ranking (ranked in 2005)
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.0
University of Chicago 5.0
3. Harvard University (MA) 4.9
Princeton University (NJ) 4.9
Stanford University (CA) 4.9
University of California–Berkeley 4.9
7. Yale University (CT) 4.8
8. Northwestern University (IL) 4.6
9. University of Pennsylvania 4.5
10. University of California–San Diego 4.3
11. Columbia University (NY) 4.2
University of California–Los Angeles 4.2
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 4.2
University of Wisconsin–Madison 4.2
15. New York University 4.1
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities 4.1
17. California Institute of Technology 4.0
Cornell University (NY) 4.0
19. University of Rochester (NY) 3.9
20. Carnegie Mellon University (PA) 3.8</p>

<p>There is no such thing as undergrad department rankings.</p>

<p>The Gourman Report has been thoroughly discredited by the academic community, to the point where warning stickers are placed in the book in college libraries noting that Gourman has consistently refused to explain his "methodology".</p>

<p>The USNEWS ranking is for grad school programs. I have a list of the percentage of Economics PhDs awarded per graduate of all undergrad schools over the last ten years, which is interesting and may identify schools that you might want to investigate further to see if they match your interests, but it is by no means a comprehensive "ranking". I'll post it if you like.</p>

<p>Economics is a "bread and butter" department at most good colleges and universities -- often one of the three largest departments on campus. Econ students (and professors) have many varied interests. Some have an eye on a business career and aim towards MBA programs. Others have a more academic interest and aim towards PhDs. Still others have a public policy interest -- for example those interested in issued of third-world globalization may major in economics.</p>

<p>Because there are so many strong econ departments, I would recommend beginning your search with "big picture" stuff like size, location, campus culture and, then move on to the narrow such as the Econ department. Don't let the trees obscure your view of the forest. I say that even though my daughter's school (which I like to recommend) produces more future Econ PhDs per grad than any other college or university by a mile (more than double the rate of the #2 school). But, that in and of itself would be a poor reason to choose the school.</p>

<p>On page 82 of Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients there is a ranked list for Economics 1986-1995 (this list is for doctoral-degree-granting institutions, but it excludes public universities):</p>

<p>Harvard
Yale
U Penn
Princeton
U Chicago
MIT
Cornell
Georgetown
Stanford
Northwestern
George Washington
Duke
Brandeis
Brigham Young
Brown
Boston U
Columbia
U Notre Dame
American U
Johns Hopkins
NYU
Washington U
Boston C
Dartmouth
Fordham </p>

<p>All of the private colleges listed by Gourman are also in the Baccalaureate Origins of PhDs list except U of R and CMU. I would say that is pretty good confirmation of the Gourman Report considering that the Baccalaureate Origins list is for private universities only. </p>

<p>I think there is some comment on the methods Gourman used in the beginning of his book. I will check. </p>

<p>Whatever the methods he used, the results are pretty accurate. I have found a couple of examples where Gourman had relatively unknown colleges properly ranked in a high position such as U Delaware for ChemE and Kenyon for English. This told me that Gourman did his homework. </p>

<p>Some LAC-lovers get tweeked by Gourman because Gourman downplayed them in his rankings. Private-college lovers get tweeked because Gourman favored publics. But the info is still useful and accurate although incomplete because of the omission of LACs. So, for balance, I consult Rugg's Recommendations which seems to do just the opposite, it favors LACs.</p>

<p>In this same book, there is a separate list in the Baccalureate Origins for LACs 1986-1995 with Swarthmore at the top with 54 econ PhDs (Williams was second with 37). This is less than half of the 113 PhDs from Harvard College but Harvard College has 5 times as many students as Swarthmore. Bachelors grads from tiny Swartmore eventually earned just as many PhDs as Princeton and U Chicago grads.</p>

<p>Is it possible people who go to big-name universities for undergrad are more interested in going straight into the workforce after graduation or getting MBAs as opposed to PhDs than are people who go to LACs? I wouldn't be surprised..</p>

<p>The reason that Gourman is rejected by the academic community is that he has not released his methodology and that he draws distinctions to the decimal place in his rankings that are far beyond the resolution of any statistical measure.</p>

<p>Here's an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:</p>

<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v44/i11/11a00101.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://chronicle.com/free/v44/i11/11a00101.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here's the per capita Econ PhD production over the most recent 10 year period followed by the data for raw totals of Econ PhDs. In both cases, the number immediately before the college name is the total number of graduates over a ten year period, offset five years earlier than the PhD period. Of course, this data does not capture the large number of Econ majors who end up in a business/MBA career path. For example, Amherst produces fewer Econ PhDs relative to other LACs, but it is known to produce a lot of MBAs. So, in that sense, this list is not only a partial measure of Econ departments, but also a measure of where the students at a school fall on the academic career versus pre-professional career continuum. I think you can conclude that high PhD producers have solid Econ departments, but you can't necessarily conclude that lower PhD producers don't.</p>

<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 grads </p>

<p>Academic field: Economics </p>

<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database<br>
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database<br>
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>

<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period </p>

<p>1 3657 Swarthmore College 16
2 3229 Grinnell College 7
1 5082 Williams College 7
2 4561 Carleton College 7
3 17855 Harvard University 6
4 1167 Agnes Scott College 6
5 11348 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5
6 8270 University of Chicago 5
7 12941 Yale University 5
8 2059 California Institute of Technology 5
9 11101 Princeton University 5
10 3945 Macalester College 5
11 16662 Stanford University 4
12 3578 Pomona College 4
13 7067 Oberlin College 4
14 5840 Wellesley College 4
15 4917 Trinity University 4
16 3740 Bowdoin College 3
17 2410 Earlham College 3
18 2763 Berea College 3
19 4179 Amherst College 3
20 1753 Wabash College 3
21 2106 Bard College 3
22 1061 Rocky Mountain College 3
23 2495 Coe College 3
24 7081 Wesleyan University 3
25 12784 College of William and Mary 3
26 4597 Colby College 3
27 13622 Columbia University in the City of New York 3
28 1954 Hillsdale College 3
29 4361 Franklin and Marshall College 3</p>

<hr>

<p>Here's the same data, for the top raw PhD producers. This list is more useful when looking at large state universities:</p>

<p>1 17855 Harvard University 115
2 56363 University of California-Berkeley 104
1 16662 Stanford University 70
2 33736 Cornell University, All Campuses 67
3 12941 Yale University 63
4 25853 University of Pennsylvania 63
5 58176 University of Wisconsin-Madison 63
6 53612 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 62
7 11348 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 58
8 3657 Swarthmore College 57
9 11101 Princeton University 53
10 51689 University of Maryland at College Park 46
11 57165 Brigham Young University, Main Campus 42
12 8270 University of Chicago 41
13 38488 University of California-Davis 41
14 61136 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 40
15 67393 Michigan State University 39
16 73365 University of Texas at Austin 39
17 15251 Georgetown University 37
18 29049 University of Virginia, Main Campus 36
19 68093 Texas A&M University Main Campus 36
20 5082 Williams College 35
21 13622 Columbia University in the City of New York 35
22 39705 University of Massachusetts at Amherst 35
23 12784 College of William and Mary 34
24 19770 Northwestern Univ 34
25 34763 Miami University, All Campuses 34
26 41410 University of Colorado at Boulder 34
27 54970 University of California-Los Angeles 34
28 57978 University of Florida 33
29 4561 Carleton College 31
30 19161 University of Notre Dame 31
31 30559 University of California-San Diego 31
32 35755 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 31
33 79507 Pennsylvania State U, Main Campus 31
34 52518 University of Minnesota - Twin Cities 30
35 14669 Brown University 29
36 15531 Duke University 29
37 34586 Boston University 29
38 7067 Oberlin College 28
39 69239 Ohio State University, Main Campus 28
40 32432 Colorado State University 27
41 51040 Indiana University at Bloomington 27
42 13887 Washington University 25
43 14485 George Washington University 25
44 21761 University of California-Santa Cruz 25
45 51837 Rutgers the State Univ of NJ New Brunswick 25
46 3229 Grinnell College 24
47 5840 Wellesley College 22
48 33232 University of Kansas, Main Campus 22
49 10684 Dartmouth College 21
50 12139 American University 21
51 30609 University of Delaware 21
52 39182 University of California-Santa Barbara 21
53 45641 University of Georgia 21
54 53192 Purdue University, Main Campus 21
55 28839 University of Nebraska at Lincoln 20
56 30099 New York University 20
57 34660 University of Missouri, Columbia 20
58 61290 University of Washington - Seattle 20</p>

<p>The article in the Chronicle explains somewhat how Gourman gets his rankings. I think it is incorrect to say that Gourman Report was "rejected by the academic community" based on this article. The article quotes critics and supporters both. The biggest complaint was that Gourman underrates LACs (which I think is true), probably because research focus is one of his ten criteria. The article is a criticism of Gourman's lack of openness about his methods but, as someone in the the article points out, you do not have to know how something works to know simply that it DOES work. </p>

<p>All but two of the colleges in Gourman's list also appear in the NRC list of top raw PhD producers. The correlation between the Gourman ranking and the NRC PhD production ranking is +.52, statistically significant and moderately high. This is further validation of the Gourman rankings.</p>

<p>I concede that the Gourman book underrates LACs but it is still useful as a ranking of undergrad research universities.</p>

<br>


<br>

<p>Do a search. Read the warnings about the book's integrity by college librarians.</p>

<p>Here is one quote from critic David Webster, “The most remarkable of these ratings
occurred in Gourman’s combined rating of
foreign and American medical schools, where
ninety-nine schools in a row are listed, from 4.98
to 4.00, with no ties and no skipped integers.”</p>

<p>Gourman has also rated departments that don't exist.</p>

<p>Sorry for interupting this spirited debate. But you guys are debating a moot point about "rankings." I'm sure both of you believe that rankings should not be the single, determining factor for any college decision (or for that matter even a very high factor). Numbers can only mean so much. Jacknjill really should go visit any colleges that he is intersted in, and sit in on a few economics classes. Also, the rankings should really serve as a preliminary guide or starting point in the search for "good colleges." I'm pretty sure that even though a college can produce a lot of Ph. Ds and MBAs, that it doesn't mean that the teaching is any better than anywhere else, or that the specific department will be any better than a college that produces less Ph. Ds. It quality, not quantity, that's something that most rankings seem to leave out.</p>

<p>interesteddad-
If the Gourman report results are essentially correct then the scaling is irrelevant. When I look at Gourman's lists for areas with which I have some familiarity, I can see that they are roughly in the right order. That's good enough to get ideas for a college search. I don't care if number 21 should actually be number 25 or that they are only separated by a tenth. I have studied some of the Gourman rankings in depth and found them to be related to other measures of quality such as the size of the department relative to the size of the college and also related to measures of selectivity and degree production. So there is some cross-validation for the rankings. Why get hung up on the scaling when the rankings are evidently valid? So far, I have not heard or read anybody saying the rankings are not valid. And, as I said, Gourman gets some things right that are not common knowledge.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Is it possible people who go to big-name universities for undergrad are more interested in going straight into the workforce after graduation or getting MBAs as opposed to PhDs than are people who go to LACs? I wouldn't be surprised..

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I second that totally. Seriously, I bet LACs have good numbers in that survey in just about ANY field, not just econ. Funny thing is the top consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain.. don't seem to recruit actively in LACs (except Williams and to a lesser extent, Amherst). </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=108904%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=108904&lt;/a>
If Swarthmore is so great in econ, why isn't it on the recruiting list of top consulting firms?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Is it possible people who go to big-name universities for undergrad are more interested in going straight into the workforce after graduation or getting MBAs as opposed to PhDs than are people who go to LACs? I wouldn't be surprised..

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's possible, but why would this be more the case there than at an LAC, or at a top private school?</p>

<p>I chose Northwestern over Carleton precisely because almost no one had heard of Carleton in my hometown (Hong Kong). I picked it for practical reason, assuming I would look for a job during my senior year (or after graduation). If I were thinking of pursuing graduate study, I might have chosen Carleton (I did like close-knit environment with professors easily becoming your friends..etc) since I could take care of the name issue by going to grad schools like Stanford. I bet if you do a survey for incoming freshmen about their future plan, greater % in LACs would say they may go to grad schools.</p>

<p>sam lee, so u went to NW, where did u go to grad school?</p>

<p>We have debated the relevance of the numbers of PhD to "measure" the value or quality of a program in Economics. While I think that most that needed to be said has been said about that canard, I would encourage everyone to check the size, depth, and qualifications of the faculty in Economics at the Grinnell and Agnes Scott Colleges as they rank VERY high on the "ranking": </p>

<p>2 3229 Grinnell College 7
4 1167 Agnes Scott College 6</p>

<p>So, is this PhD production number STILL a testament to the commitment of a school to a particular program. If this level of investment in the department of Economics is a "commitment" I'd hate to see what an afterthought would look like.</p>

<p>"Funny thing is the top consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain.. don't seem to recruit actively in LACs (except Williams and to a lesser extent, Amherst)."</p>

<p>There is nothing funny about being dead wrong about something.</p>

<p>I think it is a little simplistic to say that since Economics is a popular major, there isn't much of a difference between programs. Some Economics program are clearly better than others. </p>

<p>I also don't think there is correlation between quality of undergraduate education and PhD production. One could even argue that the top undergraduate programs have so many companies actively recruiting on campus that there is very little insentive for their undergrads to seek out further studies. </p>

<p>The top Econ programs that I am aware of are:</p>

<p>RESEARCH PROGRAMS:
Group I
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of Chicago</p>

<p>Group II
Northwestern University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University</p>

<p>Group III
Columbia University
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>

<p>Group IV
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
New York University
University of California-San Diego
University of Wisconsin-Madison</p>

<p>Group V
Boston University
University of Maryland-College Park
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
University of Rochester
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia</p>

<p>LACs:
Group I
Amherst College
Carleton College
Claremont McKenna College
Dartmouth College (although Dartmouth is not a LAC, it does not offer graduate degrees in Economics)
Grinnell College
Pomona College
Swarthmore College
Wesleyan University
Williams College</p>

<p>Group II
Bowdoin College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of William and Mary (see Dartmouth)
Haverford College
Macalester College
Oberlin College
Vassar College
Wabash College</p>

<p>The Gourman Report is crap because the methodologies aren't explained clearly. The ones that are known are factors such as clarity in a department's mission statement, which in most people's opinions is not enough to judge a program by.</p>

<p>Graduate rankings do not reflect on the quality of the undergraduate quality.</p>

<p>The "# of PhD producers" is not a good ranking and time and time again it is discredited on these forums as a way of accurately (or even generally) assessing undergraduate programs.</p>

<p>Economics, as stated before, is a bread and butter dept for most schools. All the top schools will have strong econ programs, so it would be wise to mainly consider other factors when choosing a school.</p>