Econ #1 (tie)
B-School #3
Law School #4
English #3 (fell from #1 after tarnished reputation due to politicization controversy)
History #5
PoliSci #10
Harris #4 in public policy analysis, #5 social policy
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My impression with the English Dept is that they were holding onto that title of #1 rather tenuously. They slipped to #4 in theory and crit and that’s what caused them to slip to #3 overall. They don’t have a deep field of top subs in English, unlike Berkeley which dominates in the traditional categories (Medieval, 18th Cent. Brit, American, etc) as well as the trendy (gender, AA lit, and so forth). In fact, it appears that to really be on top, having a good rep in those trendy categories is a must! Perhaps that stunt about AA Studies truly was about building up the department in a popular area. If anything, UChicago could be accused of playing to the rankings!
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Berkeley is horrible. Pretty much all the so-called “top” departments are today. The Berkeley website is a joke with its woke propaganda. Small minds who will be remembered for nothing. Disposable scholarship that no one will remember even a generation from now. Any one who loves literature or education would be better off with the Great Books program described in the other link. James Watson, one of the greatest scientists of all time, was a graduate of that program. Some of the creative writing programs would probably be a better option as well.
It’s important to point out that looking at grad school rankings may not translate well into undergraduate educational quality. For instance, Berkeley dominates UChicago in English, and a fair perusal of each school’s respective PhD program in that subject will show that Berkeley’s placement and time to graduation are also superior to UChicago’s. Does this mean that Berkeley has a better humanities experience for the undergrads than does UChicago? No. If one prefers a Great Books approach, there are Hum and Sosc sections that will give them something along those lines. It’s not St. John’s, but UChicago is a top R1 and there is more to undergraduate education there than a Great Books program. Anyone curious as to how Moritmer Adler’s Great Books influenced the Core we see today at UChicago should read Boyer’s essay that is linked in the Chicago Maroon article. It’s a fascinating read.
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I agree with JB. I certainly have no time for many of those aspects of Berkeley that WRHarper rightly criticizes, but Berkeley’s English, history, and classics departments are phenomenal and contain many scholars pursuing traditional areas of inquiry. Its English department is, as JB says, far, far stronger in those traditional areas than is Chicago’s. All in all, I think Berkeley is the strongest university in the country–and has been since at least the 1950s.