From Schools to Careers

[dr. t]

Hi,

 

I haven't seen a lot posted on this school here, so I thought I would throw it out for comment: Does anyone know about the prestige of UC Santa Cruz's History program, and how it might be seen to future hiring committees? It is part of the UC system, which I think is always a plus, but I know it doesn't rank anywhere near Berkeley or even UCLA. But If I want to teach at the state college level, is this a good program for that?

 

Thanks!

 

In the study in the first post, it ranks 51st between SUNY Buffalo and BU, well outside the top 15% / 21 schools.

[danwaterfield]

So - completion pending, obviously - I shouldn't have any problem with a Cambridge PhD in History if I'm competing against top 10 school grads for international positions?

[mvlchicago]

In the context of this study? Because it was primarily done with a national aim and national placement within the States. If we're opening our requirements for history positions to all around the globe, I'd have to imagine that the "prestige" consideration is less of a concern since the production of "top 10 schools" (if that's a useful category) is usually concentrated around the places that produce top 10 schools. Basically; I wouldn't imagine many institutions in Kosovo to have a number of "top 10 school" degrees. Of course, that'll probably necessitate much better language skills than anglo-centric places, but yknow, trade-offs exist everywhere. 

[knp]

What do you mean by 'international' positions? I assume you're talking about positions outside of the UK. So, positions in the United States? In other countries throughout the Anglophone world? Or do you mean positions in international history?

[HistoryMystery]

In the study in the first post, it ranks 51st between SUNY Buffalo and BU, well outside the top 15% / 21 schools.

 

Just wanted to chime in and say that I really like this study. Nice to see schools ranked in a way that aligns with our interests (placement potential); other ranking schemes can seem so mystical/arbitrary sometimes.

[dr. t]

Actually, what's really interesting is how much the results from the study differ from "conventional wisdom" reports.

 

Here's the ranking list by centrality from the report (for history):

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5p5Vo_V4WG_UWJwTld2bVF0dlU/view?usp=sharing

Edited March 19, 2015 by telkanuru

[turnings]

It doesn't seem to vary much at all as far as I can tell. The only unusual placements (near the top) appear to be UWisconsin, coming in slightly higher than most would conventionally expect, and Brandeis, whose vastly higher position appears to result from the fact that the designers of the study used only the rank of Brandeis' American History PhD program, rather than the program as a whole (see footnote 3 on pg. 17 of the supplementary materials pdf).

[dr. t]

24 12 8  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 

48 36 11    University of Notre Dame

 

49 33 13    Rice University

 

119 85 22     University of South Carolina

 

45 36 24   Carnegie Mellon University    

 

53 26 31     Vanderbilt University

 

17 28 40      UC Davis    

 

57 24 40    Ohio State University

 

122 85 82      Texas A&M

 

Just an eyeball

Edited March 19, 2015 by telkanuru

[dr. t]

Crunching some numbers, 63 schools deviate more than 10 places from both the USN 2009 and NRC2010 rankings

 

The top 10 are:

Study USN2009 NRC2010 institution

43 101 121 Catholic University of America

119 85 22 University of South Carolina

118 71 42 Purdue University

94 28 52 CUNY Graduate Center

74 124 124 Drew University

112 92 35 Northeastern University

142 64 124 George Mason University

32 71 87 State University of New York, Stony Brook

89 71 14 Arizona State University

140 124 67 University of Memphis

 

Catholic and SUNY-Stony Brook are severely under-ranked by the conventional metric, the others are substantially over-ranked.

[turnings]

Fair enough. I don't know that there's any real difference between 124 and 74 or 123 and 92 though. Given the conclusions of the study, one should think very, very carefully about attending a program that far down the chain.

[HistoryMystery]

24 12 8  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 

48 36 11    University of Notre Dame

 

49 33 13    Rice University

 

119 85 22     University of South Carolina

 

45 36 24   Carnegie Mellon University    

 

53 26 31     Vanderbilt University

 

17 28 40      UC Davis    

 

57 24 40    Ohio State University

 

122 85 82      Texas A&M

 

Just an eyeball

 

I think a lot of this might have to do with how impacted the rankings are, especially USN's. I mean the top 30 are all ranked between 4.7 and 3.7 with several tie scores across the board, which might explain how UNC and Davis would rank higher or lower based on the methodology of this study.

 

I guess an easy way to see a school's viability would be to check out their placement page (which hopefully they have). Since I'm going to Davis, I researched their's extensively and it looked like the majority of their PhDs won a respectable position somewhere, which corresponds with their rank in this study.