<p>Top Classics Programs by Faculty Quality (NRC rankings)</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 Berkeley
3 Michigan
4 Princeton
5 Yale
6 Brown
7 Chicago
8 UT-Austin
9 UCLA
10 Columbia
11 UNC
12 Cornell
13 Penn
14 Bryn Mawr
15 Duke
16 Stanford
17 Illinois
18 Virginia
19 Wisconsin
20 Washington
21 Ohio State
22 UCSB
23 Johns Hopkins
24 Minnesota
25 NYU
26 Boston
27 Cincinnati
28 Fordham
29 Catholic</p>
<p>Rankings may be right or wrong, but they are from 1993 (I'm pretty sure). Would you buy a car based on quality ratings from 16 years earlier?</p>
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<p>^^^Spot on from my limited experience. My D's good friend is a Classics major, she turned down Y, B, UChicago and others for a full scholarship (tuition, R&B) at Michigan. While my D transferred out of Michigan partially because of the size, her friend stayed and is very happy. Being in a small department like Classics in a large school makes all of the difference.</p>
<p>With the exception of handful of majors that will be very popular and have larges classes at any major research university (disciplines such as Economics, Political Science, Psychology and most premed majors), most majors at Michigan attract relatively few students and therefore have small classes. Classics is one such major.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Rankings may be right or wrong, but they are from 1993 (I'm pretty sure). Would you buy a car based on quality ratings from 16 years earlier?
[/quote]
No, but reliabilty ratings and model year changes for cars are more fluid than ratings for academic reputation.</p>
<p>NRC rankings are good...but one cannot deny that departments have changed a good deal since the mid 90s. I really do not understand why the NRC has not published rankings in so long. They have promised to release new rankings since 2007.</p>
<p>^ They probably didnt like the initial results.</p>
<p>I just don't think they completed the study.</p>
<p>Classics departments are small everywhere -- there are about the same number at Harvard majoring in it as undergraduates as at Oberlin. The faculty at a university will be much much larger -- so more opportunities to take advanced classes, including graduate level; on the other hand, if you want a LAC experience, and are interested in starting Greek, there would be plenty to keep you busy at an LAC, even with a small faculty. There would be a big difference in your college experience going to a big university and an LAC -- though that would be mitigated to some extent by the small size of the classics department courses. Also, you can supplement your undergraduate experience by spending a semester or a year in one of the excellent programs in Rome/Sicily/Athens.</p>
[quote]
The National Research Council has once again fallen behind on plans to release its long awaited rankings of doctoral programs. The most recent timetable called for release of the methodology this month, and the actual rankings by mid-February. Now, the methodology will be released some time in January, with the rankings coming out sometime from mid-February to mid-March. Charlotte Kuh, who is directing the project, said that the review of the methodology wasn’t complete and that had prevented a wider launch soon. Kuh also said that the NRC has decided to stop announcing scheduling delays and will not comment on the release date until one week prior to release. “This is a huge project with imponderables about imponderables — and I am very tired of NRC DELAYED AGAIN headlines,” Kuh said via e-mail.
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<p>What's the issue with the "methodology"?...Methodology should have been set before they conducted the study. Writing a document explaining the methodology should not take very long.</p>
<p>Almost</a> Ready for the Doctoral Program Rankings :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
It seems like the deans can't agree on the methodology.</p>
<p>^ The NRC has all the data they're going to get. But apparently they're still fighting over how to categorize and present the data. Some of the examples mentioned in the Inside Higher Ed piece are instructive. Heavy-hitter research schools are objecting to a proposal to count research grants by their number, rather than by their size, quality, or importance---so a non-competitive $1,000 grant from a local business counts the same as a major, multimillion dollar grant secured from a national agency through a competitive, peer-reviewed process. I'd say that's something worth fighting over. Too bad they didn't have their act together on these questions before they put the data together.</p>
<p>As for the Classics rankings, I take all rankings with reservations. Who's to say that #14 on the list, Bryn Mawr, isn't a better place to study Classics as an undergrad than #1 on the list, Harvard---even apart from the fact that this particular list is out of date? But I think this list, like Gourman and Ruggs, is nonetheless a pretty good starting place for a search. Chances are most of the programs listed at the top of the field in 1995 (from 1993 data) are still quite strong in that field in 2008, though undoubtedly there will be some shift in relative positions, perhaps a few programs dropping off the list, a few new ones being added, some rocketing upward, a few plummeting. But by and large, colleges and universities treat their strongest programs as strategic assets. It's usually at least as important to them to try to maintain and build on existing strengths as it is to build up in areas where they're presently not as strong. They may succeed or fail, of course; but I'd be surprised if most of the top 10 or 15 schools in the 1995 Classics rankings aren't still in (at least) the top 15 or 20 in 2009. </p>
<p>Here's what I'd do: go to these schools' websites, see how many Classics faculty they have, what the faculty's own educational pedigrees are, what their research interests are, what undergrad courses they teach, and what undergrad courses are being taught across the whole department in any given year. Do the same for the LACs that have been mentioned here: Holy Cross, Oberlin, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, etc., as well as any others that catch your eye. Then go and visit a few, being sure to schedule meetings with the department chairs or other members of the faculty to discuss what their school can offer you in this field, and (if they're willing to say) what other schools you might consider. It's a fairly small field. They'll have a pretty good idea who's who and what's what, and even though their view of the field will be only partially informed and reflective of their own professional and parochial biases (and therefore should be taken with a big grain of salt), they almost certainly will have some useful information you don't have.</p>
<p>Gourman is a complete fraud (and more out-of-date even for its own fraudulent claims than NRC).</p>
<p>
Academics are less fluid, but they can still change very rapidly, particularly in the humanities. UCLA plundered other universities for professors (Harvard included) and just one year later arguably has the world's best program in Indo-European studies. As another example, a huge grant donated to NYU two years ago allowed them to start an entirely new institute devoted to ancient studies with new professors, new post-docs, a new graduate program, etc. Brown recently did a complete overhaul of its Egyptology "department" (which had only one full-time professor!) and added a half-dozen new scholars as well as creating a brand new archaeological institute.</p>
<p>Even well-established tenured professors at prestigious universities are prone to movement. Stanford lost one of its "big name" Classics professors to Yale just this year (Joe Manning), Columbia lost one to NYU (Roger Bagnall), Yale lost one to Penn (Tom Tartaron), etc.</p>
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One of the advantages of going to a university is that a student can take courses in other areas of the ancient world. I am not a fan of studying Classics in a vacuum, which is a regrettable tendency among many LACs (Beloit and Bryn Mawr are notable exceptions). It is becoming increasingly obvious that classical authors drew heavily on other cultures, and it is not at all uncommon for a classicist to pick up, say, Sanskrit or Hittite. Courses offerings at most LACs are unfortunately too limited to provide much beyond two or three years of Greek and Latin.</p>
<p>This is especially true where programs tend to be small (like Classics). Heck, since 1993, the vast majority of senior faculty at these institutions would have either retired or moved.</p>
<p>There's always some lateral movement and losses of senior people to retirement, but in general there's less movement in the departmental rankings than you might suppose. There are powerful institutional reasons for this. When the strongest departments lose good people, they're usually able to replace them with good people. Schools want very badly to maintain and build on existing strengths, so if they lose good people in a strong department, that department will usually have the resources it needs to make strong replacement hires, and they'll be looking for the best they can get. On the supply side, the best new entrants into the field and the best people on less prestigious faculties elsewhere will most strongly covet those slots on faculties with existing strong reputations. So the strong tend to stay strong, unless the faculty just blows up and people depart en masse, which does happen---though it's rare. By the same token, it's very difficult for a school to come from nowhere and break into the top ranks; more commonly, there's slow incremental movement, and a rise to the top is a decades-long quest. But of course, there is the occasional exception. </p>
<p>It's also true, of course, that the smaller the department the greater will be the impact of a small number of departures. But even in a field like Classics, the top schools have quite large faculties. Michigan, for example, lists 24 people at the professor, associate professor, or assistant professor levels in its Classics department. In a department that large and that prestigious, the loss of one or two very good people will be felt temporarily, but it won't throw the whole department out of whack---they'll be easily replaced with very talented and very eager newcomers. At LACs it's different. If you've got 5 or 6 people in the department and two leave, you could go from having a strong department to a middling one overnight.</p>
<p>Proof? Philosophy is in important ways a similar field to Classics---a core humanities field with an ancient academic pedigree, but not the most popular undergrad major. There's been relatively little movement since the 1995 NRC rankings of philosophy faculty quality, as measured by an independent 2006-08 survey of philosophers reported by the Philosophical Gourmet. The methodologies of the two surveys are different, but the rankings not so very different---some relative jockeying around, most schools moving up or down only a few slots over that interval, with just a couple of outliers. Here's the 1995 NRC ranking, with the school's 2008 Philosophical Gourmet ranking following in parentheses:</p>
<p>1995 NRC/School/(2008 Philosophical Gourmet):
1 Princeton (3)<br>
2 Pittsburgh (5)<br>
3 Harvard (7)<br>
4 UC Berkeley (12)<br>
5 UCLA (7)<br>
6 Stanford (6)<br>
7 Michigan (4)<br>
8 Cornell (16)<br>
9 MIT (7)<br>
10 Arizona (13)<br>
11 Chicago (20)<br>
12 Rutgers (2)<br>
13 Brown (16)<br>
14 UC San Diego (20)<br>
15 Notre Dame (13)<br>
16 UNC Chapel Hill (10)<br>
17 U Illinois Chicago (35)<br>
18 CUNY (23)<br>
19 U Mass Amherst (24)<br>
20 UC Irvine (20)<br>
21 Wisconsin (24)<br>
22 Syracuse (32)<br>
23 Ohio State (26)<br>
24 Northwestern (53)<br>
25 Texas (13)<br>
26 Penn (27)<br>
27 Columbia (10)<br>
28 Boston University (50)<br>
29 Indiana (27)<br>
30 Johns Hopkins (35)</p>
<p>Notice that not a single school ranked in the top 15 in the 1995 NRC ranking fell below #20 in the 2008 Philosophical Gourmet ranking. To be sure, there was movement within this group: Rutgers leaped from 12 to 2, Berkeley fell from 4 to 12, Cornell from 8 to 16, Chicago from 11 to 20. But these are still extremely strong faculties; it's no demerit to be ranked the 20th-best philosophy faculty in the country, even if you were ranked 11th-best over a decade ago. And most schools that started out at or near the top in the 1995 rankings moved only 3 or 4 spots up or down---essentially just statistical "noise." Farther down the rankings, a couple of schools---Northwestern and Boston U---fell more precipitously, but this may be the result of (what is alleged by its critics to be) methodological bias in the Philosophical Gourmet survey in favor of analytical philosophy and against continental philosophy, in which both Northwestern and BU have been particularly strong. The University of Illinois-Chicago also fell, but this is overall a weaker school that lost some top people and apparently found them more difficult to replace than would a Princeton, Harvard, Michigan, or Stanford, for reasons that are obvious if you think about it.</p>
<p>(more below)</p>
<p>Going in the other direction, there is one obviously anomaly. At the very top of the 2008 Philosophical Gourmet ranking stands NYU, which was not ranked among the top 71 philosophy faculties in the 1995 NRC rankings. An impressive feat, for which NYU is to be congratulated, but also exceedingly rare. Less surprisingly, Columbia, Yale, and Duke all made strong improvements over rankings that were somewhat down in the mid-90s; but then, Ivies and other handsomely endowed privates can do that. Outside of that small handful, the top faculties in the 2008 Philosophical Gourmet ranking were also ranked highly in 1995;</p>
<p>2008 Philosophical Gourmet/School/(1995 NRC)
1 NYU (n.r.)
2 Rutgers (12)
3 Princeton (1)
4 Michigan (7)
5 Pittsburgh (2)
6 Stanford (6)
7 Harvard (3)
MIT (9)
UCLA (5)
10 Columbia (27)
UNC Chapel Hill (16)
12 UC Berkeley (4)
13 Arizona (10)
Notre Dame (15)
Texas (25)
16 Brown (13)
Cornell (8)
Southern California (33)<br>
Yale (58)
20 UC Irvine (20)<br>
UC San Diego (14)<br>
Chicago (11)
23 CUNY (18)
24 U Mass Amherst (19)
Wisconsin (21)
26 Ohio State (23)
27 Duke (43)
Indiana (29)<br>
U Maryland (34)
Penn (26)</p>
<p>Bottom line? Well, this is a small sample, of course, based on one field. But what I take from this is that if a faculty was highly ranked in the 1995 NRC rankings, there's a gosh-darned good chance that it's still pretty highly regarded today. We'll learn more when the new NRC rankings come out in February or March (or whenever). But in searching for a strong school in a field like Classics, the 1995 NRC rankings are not a bad place to start.</p>
<p>^ Oh, and one more thing. If anything I'd expect the rankings to be if anything even more static in a field like Classics. Precious few schools are investing heavily these days in bulking up their Classics departments. It's a field that's being de-emphasized and de-funded at many schools. Schools with the very top programs will by and large invest enough to maintain their current rankings, because a top 10 or top 25 NRC ranking gives you valuable bragging rights, and it's probably easier to hang on to your best people in a field where there aren't a lot of aggressive upstarts making a run at them. (UCLA and NYU may be exceptions, but at #9 and #25 respectively they were already highly ranked in the 1995 NRC rankings). It also means that even if those top schools from the 1995 rankings slip a bit due to disinvestment by their institutions, they probably won't fall very far because there just aren't a lot of up-and-comers positioned to pass them.</p>
<p>I'd like to think this will change. There are reports of a revival of interest in Latin in particular at the HS and even lower grade levels, which might portend an uptick in demand for undergrad courses and potentially increased demand for Latin teachers. But so far I've seen no evidence of a change in college and university hiring and staffing patterns, and in the current economic climate a boom in Classics hires seems an extremely remote possibility.</p>
<p>What's a "boom" in hiring? Oberlin added a faculty position in classics last year, which was a 25% increase...sounds like a boom, but it was only one person. In a vacuum, I would agree that a university is an ideal place to study classics (if you want to be in a university setting) -- I just attended a series of lectures by Mary Beard at Cal, which was very well attended, week after week -- the faculty at Cal has had a big turnover since I was a graduate student there (though there are still some of old faculty around) and if anything it is far more vibrant than it used to be (and trendier by far). There is a huge faculty considering the number of undergraduate majors; that is true at Harvard as well, which also has a renowned faculty, and you could easily study Sanskrit, Egyptology, etc. On the other hand, I have a kid at at Oberlin who is challenged and excited about the faculty and offerings. Someone with an unusually strong background in classics for a US student -- i.e., more than AP Latin -- might find it too limited, perhaps, but there are courses in philosophy, medieval literature, art history, archeology (Oberlin is affiliated with a dig in Italy), and opportunities even to study Sanskrit (independent study), and Oberlin has annual Martin Lectures, which are a mini-version of the Sather Lectures I attended at Cal.</p>
<p>
Last year 130,000 high school students took Latin, down from the 1970s enrollment of 150,000. Fifteen years before that, Latin enrollment was around 700,000. Even if Latin enrollment in high school increases, it would be an uphill battle.</p>
<p>A recent study showed that the tiny increase in high school students taking Latin scarcely helped classics.</p>
<p>*While Latin enrollments in public secondary schools have increased the past few years (Latin in still studied by fewer than 2 percent of America's high schoolers), Latin and Greek enrollments continue to decline as a percentage of the total university population. *</p>
<p>CAMWS reports an equally distressing trend among high schools.</p>
<p>Each year, for lack of teachers, existing programs are cancelled, thriving programs are told they cannot expand, and schools that want to add Latin are unable to do so.</p>
<p>I am a philosophy major at Rutgers, and although the faculty are regarded as prestigious scholars in the academic field, the rankings do not REFLECT the real undergrad education you will receive. Many large research institutes are not where you want to be for undergrad philosophy. Schools like Swarthmore, Haverford, Williams,etc are where you want to be for philosophy, classic, linguistics. How can you really learn persuasive argument skills, critical thinking, and great writing skills if you are in a lecture hall of 250 people? LAC's best way to go for the classics, etc.</p>