Econ department: how does one know it's good?

A lot of people have said the econ department at Colby is good, but it’s hard to find any hard verification of this beyond personal testimonies. Is there a definitive way to prove that it’s strong?

The Econ department based on ranking of faculty publishing is #20 in the country. Most of its peer schools are ranked much higher though in this poll. Bowdoin #14, Bates #13, Lafayette #12, etc.

20 is still very good.

You can view the source for post 1 directly should you not have found it: “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges,” IDEAS. 196 schools were reviewed in the analysis.

Department is good, I think. It wasn’t the reason I came to school. I would say it’s on par with a lot of other liberal arts schools. In terms of the Best Undergrad Faculty rankings, anything after #10 or so is kind of a toss-up. I visited a couple of those places that had great rankings on that list and some of those really stood out (Swarthmore, Davidson, Williams). The others on that list after that were fine, but not that level that I saw at the other places. Given that, I would still say the teachers here are good. 8/10

The link for the above referenced article:

https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html