Are the disappointing Leiter's site and Gourmet's ranking a portrait of USA's academy?

[pecado]

I have been reading about graduate studies and philosophy "rankings" for 3 years, while planning to apply finally this year.

I found this gradcafe the last year, and I have read many threads here. And there are abundant comments that cite the Gourmet's rankings and Leiter's website.

I have read those rankings and I find many deficiencies. The worst one is, I think, its blatant focus on the United States, something that would not be bad if the people were not interpreting them as the world's rankings.

Leiter's website keeps the same tone of "USAism", it is academically priggish, and bossy on the readers.

I feel disappointed with this, and I really hope that they do not portrait the general ambience of the philosophy in the USA. Gladly wikipedia says that Leiter teaches law, not philosophy. But many of the participants in his website accept and play by his rules.

I am not sure why you never consider other rankings -like the QS philosophy rankings-, or perhaps, not using any ranking at all. The QS ranking is, or at least it tries to be, global, although it is clearly inclined in favour of the USA's universities; yet, many posters here give exclusivity to the Gourmet's report.

I think all this is bad because, the reason why one tries to study the postgraduate degree at other university is to get a broader vision of philosophy, and avoid developing a provincial view of philosophy. That is the reason why I am trying to study abroad. But, giving so much credit to Leiter and his rankings seems a symptom of provincialism -or nationalism?- in that country's academy.

I am really interested in studying the deepest problems of philosophy, but I am also interested in not having to stand that senseless ambience that these websites demonstrate. I hope someone here alleviate my frustration and show me that I am getting a wrong image of USA's academy, and that it is actually better, friendlier, freer, and more enjoyable.

Please give me your opinions. Thanks.

[sidebysondheim]

I've met far more people who either do not like Leiter or take everything he says with lots of salt in the discipline than the opposite. Therefore, I don't think you can take his website as any indicator of the ambience of philosophy in the US. It is after all one man who has found himself in the position of having many people in the discipline frequent his blog, despite the fact that (as you pointed out) he isn't housed in a philosophy department anymore. 

"The reason why one tries to study the postgraduate degree at other university is to get a broader vision of philosophy." This seems most likely false for most people. You study a postgraduate degree at a different university because it looks better (i.e., it will make you more appealing on the job market, etc.) and in many cases your undergrad university isn't suited to train you at the level that an MA/BPhil/PhD program will. 

My guess why no one considers other rankings is because the Gourmet Report for better or worse is the discipline standard here. I also don't think it at all tries to hide the fact that it is US centered, or the fact that it is pretty Analytic centered. 

[brush]

In Leiter's defense, he calls it a ranking of of departments in the English-speaking world. And it is extremely useful for those of us applying to such departments.

[maxhgns]

 

9 hours ago, pecado said:

I am not sure why you never consider other rankings -like the QS philosophy rankings-, or perhaps, not using any ranking at all. The QS ranking is, or at least it tries to be, global, although it is clearly inclined in favour of the USA's universities; yet, many posters here give exclusivity to the Gourmet's report.

Because the QS rankings are not compiled by philosophers. The PGR is the only ranking that reflects philosophers' perceptions. It has a number of limitations, some serious, but it's definitely the best one around. The real problem is that prospective students take it as a gospel ordinal ranking of departments with clear-cut differences between tranches, or clear correlations to job outcomes. It's not. It's just a tool to help students identify research concentrations and reputation.

 

7 hours ago, brush said:

In Leiter's defense, he calls it a ranking of of departments in the English-speaking world. And it is extremely useful for those of us applying to such departments.

Yes, but that includes four English-speaking non-US countries, and it's actually pretty clear that the rankings do those programs something of a disservice, especially as far as the "overall" category goes. It's quite common to hear proponents of the PGR admitting, for example, that Canadian departments should have about .3 added to their scores to get a better sense of how they'd compare to their American counterparts.

[vimalakirti]

A bigger problem than his focus on the US is the "snowball sampling" method that Leiter uses to choose top programs. There's a new critique of his rankings on daily nous: http://dailynous.com/2015/12/14/a-detailed-critique-of-the-philosophical-gourmet-report/

[bob311]

4 hours ago, vimalakirti said:

A bigger problem than his focus on the US is the "snowball sampling" method that Leiter uses to choose top programs. There's a new critique of his rankings on daily nous: http://dailynous.com/2015/12/14/a-detailed-critique-of-the-philosophical-gourmet-report/

Both the original article and this piece are incredibly under fire for huge methodological errors. Whether you agree with Leiter or not, the article and this response are filled with manufactured data from nowhere.

[vimalakirti]

I disagree with your characterization of Bruya's article as containing "manufactured data from nowhere." Leiter and his allies are attempting to nitpick to death Brian Bruya's very compelling argument that the PGR's extreme sampling bias means its program rankings are unreliable.

Here is Brian Bruya's response to Leiter's criticism of his article: http://dailynous.com/2015/12/15/appearance-and-reality-take-2/

For those of you who want to reach your own conclusions, here's the link Bruya's original article, published in the journal Metaphilosophy: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.12161/abstract