Boston University

[hupr]

I'd be curious to hear what people think about BU and its strange situation of having a separate departments for Poli Sci and IR.

[wtncffts]

I didn't know that, so I went to their websites. It seems the poli sci department does do IR within it, so they're not so much separate as the Department of International Relations is an entirely different thing. If you look at its site, it describes it as a multidisciplinary effort which started as "The Center For International Relations" and which "grew primarily out of the History Department".

[wannabee]

I know nothing about either program. However, when I looked over the websites, it seems as though the IR degree is more oriented to policy and those who want to enter government. Moreover, it is interdisciplinary.

The Department of International Relations has developed a series of interdisciplinary Master of Arts programs. These international relations programs prepare students for a variety of careers in the international arena, including government work in the Foreign Service and intelligence agencies; jobs in private non-profit organizations, such as non-governmental organizations, policy think tanks, and international charitable organizations; and a variety of careers in the private sector, such as consulting, international journalism, and marketing.

The Poli Sci Department, by contrast, offers both the MA and PhD and seems to have a more "academic" orientation: Most of our Political Science graduate students intend to seek a teaching position at the university level.

Edited January 21, 2011 by cami215

[foosh]

I'd be curious to hear what people think about BU and its strange situation of having a separate departments for Poli Sci and IR.

It's not strange? Many PS programs in the top 30 are separate from the IR programs. However, PS & IR faculty still interact and some serve joint appointments.

[hupr]

I think it's odd to have separate departments for IR and poli sci, since at most institutions the former is a subfield of the latter. From what I understand, the IR department was created because in the 1980s the president of the university was a friend of Reagan's, and neither wanted any extra funding to go to Howard Zinn's department, so in order to keep his department underfunded but to pour some money into IR, the new department was created.

In any case, has anyone heard about the quality of BU's poli sci department? It doesn't seem to be ranked by US News and World Report. The student body seems to be mostly international. They have some real quality people teaching there, but placement doesn't look very impressive at all.

[Tufnel]

It's not strange? Many PS programs in the top 30 are separate from the IR programs. However, PS & IR faculty still interact and some serve joint appointments.

This is not entirely accurate.

Many universities have both a political science department and a policy-oriented school, the names of which often include international relations. However, every political science department in the top 30 does IR. They just approach it from an academic perspective instead of a professional one.

For example, Harvard's Department of Government contains some of the best IR scholars in the country and includes the subfield among the choices for graduate students in pursuit of the Ph.D. However, Harvard also operates the Kennedy School, which focuses heavily on international relations as practiced professionally.

As far as BU is concerned, in my opinion, you already spoke to the most relevant detail. For me, poor placement is sufficient to preclude my enrollment. Unless you'd be happy at a median placement for BU, don't go.

Edited to add: Berkeley only kinda, sorta does IR (relevant to my comment about the top 30). However, that's not due to separate faculties, they just haven't replaced several key departures.

Edited January 21, 2011 by Tufnel

[hupr]

Well, for better or worse, I guess I don't judge the quality of a school purely on its placement. For instance, a school that has lots of international students would suffer in the way that most of the people here look at placement, since many of the international students are likely to return to their home countries, for academic, professional or governmental careers. So a Turkish graduate returning to join the ministry of foreign affairs or a Colombian student returning to Bogota to teach at the Universidad Nacional would be negative points for placement.

That said, I'm not really sure how, exactly, I would judge a program, but I'm pretty sure that the fanaticism about the nebulous "ranking" (which no one seems to entirely agree about) might not be the best way of judging an education.

As way of an example, check out this article on the ranking system that drives opinions about law school and how these schools are guilty of routinely juking the stats, as it were:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html

[Tufnel]

The law school reference is a bit ironic. While the rankings are undoubtedly gamed, they are incredibly valuable for a prospective student. Not because they actually reflect the educational merit of the school but instead because they are sort of canonized into the minds of employers (at least at the top). As far as job placement is concerned, one's peer schools are the schools beside which it is ranked. The only real exceptions are HBCUs. So while they don't measure what they claim to, they remain (far too) important.

That's fairly irrelevant though due to the differences between law school and Ph.D. admissions.

I hang onto placement data because it's the only thing I can judge that's relevant to my priorities. I concede that such an approach may favor schools with fewer international students. However, I don't think there's a better way to account for placement ability outside of placement history. So while a faulty measure, I figure it's the best thing going.

Also, I'm not opposed to working abroad, so long as the university is one at which I'd like to work. Certainly that's biased toward European universities but ehh...

If there were a better way, I'd go for it. However, at the end of the day, I'm getting a Ph.D. because I want to do academic research. I don't think that's entirely about education quality. Given my learning style (largely independent and self-motivated), I think I'll probably learn the same stuff no matter where I go. I'm picking a program on the basis of its ability to train me in the nature of the discipline and to open up doors for future employment since those are things that I can't learn independently.

I'm not disagreeing with you, that'd be ridiculous because no two people are going to make these decisions the same way. I'm only explaining why I'm taking the approach I'm taking.

[hupr]

That's the thing about law school rankings: once you're in the system, it's really hard to break out of it. By falsely inflating employment stats, you increase the school's ranking which makes the school's graduates more employable. It's like perfomative ranking. Saying it's better makes it so.

Obviously, law school is different from poli sci departments, but I think the principle is comparable. But that does pose the question of how to judge independently of the various rankings (which vary quite a bit, I'll say). So let's say one has offers at 1. a school that's ranked 20th but seems like a really good fit with people you'd really like to work with and who'd really like to work with you and 2. a school that's specialized in a methodology that you're not crazy about and doesn't have as many people working in your area of interest, but is ranked 3rd or 5th. Assuming that funding is about the same, do you let the ranking make the decision?

Or putting aside schools like Boston that are unranked but generally considered good schools, what about other schools that have lower rankings but feel like a good fit with people with very similar research interests?

In my case, take Brown. Brown has a couple of really good people whose work is really relevant to what I'd like to work on, like Varshney (who used to be at Harvard and Michigan) and Cammett (who got her PhD from Berkeley). But the school has a ranking of 46, so where should that put it on a list of possibilities? Does that mean that if I were to work with these people at this "Ivy" then I would have made a poor choice because its US News and World Report ranking is low?

And ironically, many of the lower ranked departments that people are turning their noses up at are actually more competitive than many higher ranked departments, so even if I apply to a lower ranked school like Brown, there's a good chance of being rejected.

I guess the main point I'm getting at is as to whether, professionally speaking, the name brand is really the most important take-away from the whole experience of a doctoral program.

[Tufnel]

That's the thing about law school rankings: once you're in the system...

I think we agree. You attend the school that gets you where you want to go.

I do think there's much to be said about strength in a specific subfield or area. I don't mean that placement record across the board is the most important factor, but rather placement record as it pertains to your substantive area. I should have been more clear.

For methods, Rochester is among the best. For other subfields, it's not as strong. It should be perceived as such. Thus an Americanist at Rochester probably shouldn't anticipate the same kind of placement as someone who does methods. That's not a knock on American at Rochester, only noting that not all fields are the same.

Brown, in my opinion, isn't a good example of a school whose ranking belies its value. It's a great place to do undergrad and it carries a lot of lay prestige. However, I think its placement attests to the fact that training grad students is not necessarily the university's strong point. I believe at one point they completely stopped taking grad students in political science. It seems to place like a school ranked in the 40s ought to, perhaps indicating that in this case the rankings were fairly accurate. Obviously, they have some phenomenal political scientists. That doesn't mean that it's the kind of place that will provide phenomenal placement.

I agree completely that it's not about the name brand. You go to the place that gets you where you want to go, no matter the means by which that goal is accomplished.

Just my opinion. I've never spent a day as a grad student, so I admit that I could be off-base. It'd be interesting if one of the faculty members would chime in, I believe there are a few that occasionally check this board.

Edited January 21, 2011 by Tufnel

[hupr]

I think we agree. You attend the school that gets you where you want to go.

[...]

Brown, in my opinion, isn't a good example of a school whose ranking belies its value. It's a great place to do undergrad and it carries a lot of lay prestige. However, I think its placement attests to the fact that training grad students is not necessarily the university's strong point. I believe at one point they completely stopped taking grad students in political science. It seems to place like a school ranked in the 40s ought to, perhaps indicating that in this case the rankings were fairly accurate. Obviously, they have some phenomenal political scientists. That doesn't mean that it's the kind of place that will provide phenomenal placement.

Yeah, we definitely agree about that. Hate the game, not the playa, and all that.

By the by, though, where did you find Brown placement records? I can't seem to find them on the site, which may not be a good sign.

[GopherGrad]

Maybe I'm a lazy reader, but isn't this fundamentally similar to (for example) SIPA/GSAS at Columbia? If so, there are a lot of schools that offer professional IR degrees through separate schools, no?

[hupr]

I think it may have turned into that, but I don't think that's how it was started, and I think it's also the name that throws me off too. SIPA, SAIS and Fletcher, along with other programs like them, all have more generalized names, whereas I think the IR department actually was a whole department for IR.

Or again, maybe I'm misunderstanding and just letting the name hang me up.

[GopherGrad]

It's admittedly confusing labeling.

I almost applied to Harvard's program in Government and Political Economy (instead of just Government) because I thought the title meant "the place where both government and political economy is taught" rather than "a place where we teach political economy which has to do with the government we teach about in a totally different program".

[foosh]

This is not entirely accurate.

Many universities have both a political science department and a policy-oriented school, the names of which often include international relations. However, every political science department in the top 30 does IR. They just approach it from an academic perspective instead of a professional one.

There is a big difference between a program where the goal is an MA in IR and a program where the goal is a MA/PhD in PS with a subfield in IR.

[Tufnel]

Placements at Brown... I do think it's a bad sign that they don't even provide a few select placements, let alone a complete list.

I gathered as much information as I could from the jobs wikis and the job rumors site (I considered applying to Brown). There is a wiki for each of the last few years listing who got placed where. It's not complete but it's the best I could do to get info on placement at schools that do not provide it.

09-10

http://bluwiki.com/go/Poliscijobs0910

Unless a school provides the denominator (# of Ph.D.s produced in a given year), there's no way to tell how many grads simply didn't get placed. Which kind of sucks. If I get into a school that doesn't provide placement info, I will request it.

There is a big difference between a program where the goal is an MA in IR and a program where the goal is a MA/PhD in PS with a subfield in IR.

I'm not sure if you were trying to disagree but I noted that difference (academic verse policy/professional).

Edited January 22, 2011 by Tufnel