New Gourmet Report Published!

[Establishment]

And even if we bracket all that, and say, as you seem to have above, that the PGR really tracks the opinions of some central members of the discipline* (although we should recognize, I think, that the central status of some board members is determined, in part, by the PGR rankings themselves), all that suggests is that the PGR should be seen as one metric among many. But-- and here's where the September Statement comes in without dealing with Leiter's 'moral character'-- the head of the PGR has a history of viciously ostracizing other proposed metrics (eg, Dicey Jenning's placement data analysis). If the PGR is really just a reflection of opinions on departmental reputation, it should be treated as a single metric among many. But Leiter definitely doesn't behave that way. So either you've got to reject his rosy-eyed view of the PGR and get behind Dicey Jennings (at least in the spirit of producing alternative metrics), or say that the PGR tracks something more substantive than (PGR-influenced) impressions of department reputation.

 

I'm perfectly fine with other metrics. The Gourmet Report is what it is, a reputational survey (and we can qualify that it's a reputational survey of a particular sort (with biases favoring M&E, composed of certain persons, etc.). But there have been attempts in the past to produce placement based rankings (I believe a grad. student at Duke had one for PhD programs, and I believe a grad. student from NIU had one for MA programs) and there's nothing wrong with those and serve a valuable role.

[Establishment]

Also, while I agree with what Max has said, my point on some fields being not equal to others, I had a much more shallow view in mind which is that every academic subject has its orthodoxy (by which I mean something more generally than whatever the term is usually taken to mean) which needs to be taught. It's only natural that if we take a reputational survey of a department, department's whose members are strong in the orthodox areas are going to be valued/or should be valued higher than those whose members are only strong in some heterodox areas. Be it economics or philosophy. in 2015, you need to know your neoclassical theories of economics even if you're a Marxist. In 2015, you need to know your M&E even if you think metaphysics is bunk. (qualiying of course that whereas Marxist economics is probably incompatibile with neoclassical economics, I don't mean to be drawing an analogy in philosophy. I don't think Chinese or feminist philosophy is opposed, but rather is (as what said above) often just a part of things like metaphysics and political philosophy.)

Edited February 10, 2015 by Establishment

[jailbreak]

I'm sorry to say it, but Establishment isn't really wrong on this (and I say this as someone perilously close to defending & the job market whose AOS is one of those bit players). Not every AOS commands equal professional respect, especially if the AOS in question is a subfield of a subfield--if you want a sense of how things lie, check out the subfield poll Leiter ran a while back: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_0176acd76a7cc5b9

 

That said, I do think we'd get a better ranking/PGR if the overall rankings were based on the specialty rankings (provided, of course, that the paucity of evaluators for some subfields could be rectified). You could weight them in tiers, or treat them all equally--either way, I think it would be better.

 

Saying "not every AOS commands equal professional respect" is a far cry from saying "not every area of study is equal to each other." I would actually unambiguously agree with you on the former, and again firmly disagree on the latter.