Unranked programs

[maxhgns]

12 hours ago, Kierkegaardashian said:

there is definitely a (very) strong correlation between ranked programs and hirability. In that sense, they are very worth attending. I could find the reference for you, but something like 75% percent of tenure-track jobs are given to people with phd's from the top ten schools (part of this has to do with department size of course). So, I think it's pretty verifiably incorrect to say that rank and being worth attending don't even overlap that much. Even if you mean "worth attending" in the sense of "doing good philosophy" or something like that, I think that would be a hard argument to make. For me (and I'm guessing for most people on here), I want to attend a program that does the kind of philosophy I'm interested in, but I also want to get a decent job when I graduate, so ranking (unfortunately) definitely plays a factor in whether a school is worth attending or not.

Also, could you elaborate on your point that programs have chosen not to be Leiter-ranked? I've heard something vague along these lines once about Emory, but I wasn't aware that this was something that actually happened.

I'd be curious to see where you got your information about the correlation and the 75% rate from, because I'm not aware of the existence of any such information. The correlation is often posited, but as far as I'm aware it's never actually been demonstrated.

 

A few years ago I took the time to count the distribution of PhDs in PhD-granting programs. I found that five departments account for 34% of all placements into the international T53 programs. If you include all of Canada's MA- and PhD-granting departments in that calculation, then ten departments account for 43% of all placements. They are not, however, the top ten departments. The IT10 departments make up 36.23% of those placements. While it's possible that the number extends to 75% when CCs and primarily undergraduate institutions are added into the mix, I doubt it.

The thing is that things taper off really quickly after those top-placing departments (in fact, they start to taper inside that tranche!). The T10 placers don't follow the PGR's ordinal ranking (I2, I3, I7, I14, I8, I15, I12, I19, I8, I12) and the dropoffs are really steep (there's a huge drop from the #1 spot to the #2, a large drop to #3, a small drop to 4-5, then another large drop, some smaller drops for a few places, then a giant drop again). When I say a huge drop, I really mean it. A few US departments place a lot of former graduate students into the I53+Canada, but the vast majority have placed between 1 and 6. But none of that takes into account the number of graduates per program. Anyway, my point is just that the best placers, as far as placing into graduate programs goes, are not necessarily the departments you might be led to think are the best-placing. The PGR is a reputational survey, not a placement survey. I didn't run any sophisticated analyses, but just eyeballing the top ten placers, it looks like they correlate more strongly to the international prestige of the university in general (the only exception, to my mind, is Pittsburgh) than to the prestige of its philosophy department. As I go down, down, down my list of placers, it looks like that's borne out with only a few outliers.

 

As for your last question... I know that Queen's in Canada has also historically refused to participate in the ranking, and I think a few other Canadian programs have done so as well. I don't know what their reasons are, but their non-participation would make sense to me on the simple grounds that non-American programs get something of a raw deal in the PGR, and I'm not sure how reliable it is as a reputational survey of non-American programs.

[The_Last_Thylacine]

Middle of Chicago? Living expenses must be higher.

[Kierkegaardashian]

9 hours ago, maxhgns said:

I'd be curious to see where you got your information about the correlation and the 75% rate from, because I'm not aware of the existence of any such information. The correlation is often posited, but as far as I'm aware it's never actually been demonstrated.

It's actually higher than that, as 88% of tenure-track hires are from Leiter-ranked programs, and a whopping 37% of tt-hires are from the top five: http://www.newappsblog.com/2015/02/some-figures-on-prestige-bias-in-academia.html

9 hours ago, maxhgns said:

The thing is that things taper off really quickly after those top-placing departments (in fact, they start to taper inside that tranche!).

This is certainly true, and is reflected in the 37% figure above. However, while getting a degree from a ranked program outside of the top ten certainly comes with less prestige, it still opens you up to the possibility of getting hired at other ranked programs, whereas getting a phd from an unranked program makes it far less likely that you can land a job at a ranked program. So, even though a lower-ranked school like Georgetown may not place as many graduates in ranked programs, it does so at a much greater rate than unranked programs. For instance, Oregon and the University of South Florida have excellent placement records, but they have never (according to their placement data) placed a graduate into a job at a ranked school.

 

9 hours ago, maxhgns said:

Anyway, my point is just that the best placers, as far as placing into graduate programs goes, are not necessarily the departments you might be led to think are the best-placing. The PGR is a reputational survey, not a placement survey.

It's true that some unranked places have a better history of tt-hires than some ranked programs, but, again, they are far more likely to be a tt-track job at a small school in the middle of nowhere rather than a job at a ranked program. This means a lot more teaching undergrads and intro level classes and less researching and teaching classes to grad students. Which is fine (I pray that I'm lucky enough to land such a job), but my point is that there are many ways a school can place well. Again, though, even these unranked-but-placing-well schools are outliers. The PGR is indeed a reputational survey, but, unfortunately, reputation is strongly correlated with hirability. The prestige factor in hiring in philosophy is a proven phenomenon.

The only reason I harp upon this is because people need to be aware of their job prospects when they decide to enter a program. I applied to a lot of schools that, while great fits, would do me no favors in getting a job afterwards. I did this largely because I was told (by people in several unranked, "SPEP-y" programs) that prestige doesn't matter in hiring, but this is clearly not the case, though the picture is far more fuzzy than Brian Leiter would suggest.

[maxhgns]

46 minutes ago, Kierkegaardashian said:

It's actually higher than that, as 88% of tenure-track hires are from Leiter-ranked programs, and a whopping 37% of tt-hires are from the top five: http://www.newappsblog.com/2015/02/some-figures-on-prestige-bias-in-academia.html

This is certainly true, and is reflected in the 37% figure above. However, while getting a degree from a ranked program outside of the top ten certainly comes with less prestige, it still opens you up to the possibility of getting hired at other ranked programs, whereas getting a phd from an unranked program makes it far less likely that you can land a job at a ranked program. So, even though a lower-ranked school like Georgetown may not place as many graduates in ranked programs, it does so at a much greater rate than unranked programs. For instance, Oregon and the University of South Florida have excellent placement records, but they have never (according to their placement data) placed a graduate into a job at a ranked school.

 

It's true that some unranked places have a better history of tt-hires than some ranked programs, but, again, they are far more likely to be a tt-track job at a small school in the middle of nowhere rather than a job at a ranked program. This means a lot more teaching undergrads and intro level classes and less researching and teaching classes to grad students. Which is fine (I pray that I'm lucky enough to land such a job), but my point is that there are many ways a school can place well. Again, though, even these unranked-but-placing-well schools are outliers. The PGR is indeed a reputational survey, but, unfortunately, reputation is strongly correlated with hirability. The prestige factor in hiring in philosophy is a proven phenomenon.

The only reason I harp upon this is because people need to be aware of their job prospects when they decide to enter a program. I applied to a lot of schools that, while great fits, would do me no favors in getting a job afterwards. I did this largely because I was told (by people in several unranked, "SPEP-y" programs) that prestige doesn't matter in hiring, but this is clearly not the case, though the picture is far more fuzzy than Brian Leiter would suggest.

 

I think you misunderstood me. You claimed that 75% of all hires went to the T10 ranked departments. The data you cite indicates that 88% of 2013-4's hires came from Leiter-ranked programs. That's a significant difference. I have no quibble with saying that most of the hiring comes from ranked programs. My problem is with the claim that three quarters of hires come from the PGR T10, which is both false and, as I've explained, misleading.

I am not talking about the difference between getting a PhD at a ranked vs. an unranked program. I'm saying that even where ranked programs are concerned, it's only a handful of programs that are killing it in terms of placement (into MA- and PhD-granting programs), and their ordinal rank in the PGR doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it.

[Quickmick]

I think there is quite a bit out there regarding the power of prestige in academia generally:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/13/study-suggests-insular-faculty-hiring-practices-elite-departments

From the second, "The top 10 programs in each discipline produce 1.6 to 3 times more faculty than even the next 10 programs in the ranking.  And the top 11 to 20 programs produce 2.3 to 5.6 times more professors than the next 10 programs."

[maxhgns]

I don't disagree that prestige matters in philosophy. The further along I get, the clearer it is to me that it matters a lot. What I'm saying is that our usual assessment of what's prestigious isn't tracking the reality of placement especially well. Once you start to count the distribution of PhDs (in ranked programs), you see that it's not actually closely correlated to individual program rank. Oxford matters, in that order. Princeton, Harvard, Toronto, and Pittsburgh also matter, but less (and in that order). MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge, Stanford, and UCLA  matter significantly less (and in that order). Then Yale, Rutgers, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, and Western. NYU, Brown, Arizona, the Sorbonne... And then you get below 1% of placements. Even at the top end, Oxford only nets you 8.4% of placements into ranked programs (+ Canada).

Yes, those are (almost) all ranked programs. The point is just that their PGR rank doesn't translate into their placement rank (at best, a high PGR rank correlates to the loose category "1% or more of placements"). And even where their placement rank is concerned, the only programs placing very large numbers of people are the first few.

You can see the raw data for yourself (if it's still up) here.

 

The reality, I'm afraid, is that everyone struggles on the job market. Even the "sure" bets aren't that certain. I know plenty of Princeton and Oxford grads who've struggled. And the market is not going to be any better in six or seven years.

[pearclick]

As a 3rd-year PhD student at an "unranked" SPEP school, there's a pretty simple answer for this:

There's a huge divide in the U.S. between schools that do analytic philosophy and schools that primarily do not do analytic philosophy. Since analytic philosophy has been the majority of the discipline since the 1950s, those are the programs that get "ranked" by Leiter and his pals, regardless of the quality of education/faculty research/job placements of the SPEP schools. 

If you want to get a job in an analytic-centered university, go to a Leiter school. If you want to get a job in a department that focuses on phenomenology/existentialism/feminism/race/etc., go to a grad school that focuses on those things. Of course schools like Oregon aren't placing people at Yale and Arizona-- the people who get their PhDs at most SPEP schools don't DO analytic philosophy, so why would they ever apply to those departments? 

When considering the "worth" of unranked programs (outside analytic phil), rather than thinking of it in terms of rankings, it makes more sense to think of it as (almost) different fields. And, for better or for worse, SPEP grads and analytic grads primarily stay within the kinds of departments they got their degrees from. 

[apophantic]

On 1/25/2017 at 9:24 PM, pearclick said:

As a 3rd-year PhD student at an "unranked" SPEP school, there's a pretty simple answer for this:

There's a huge divide in the U.S. between schools that do analytic philosophy and schools that primarily do not do analytic philosophy. Since analytic philosophy has been the majority of the discipline since the 1950s, those are the programs that get "ranked" by Leiter and his pals, regardless of the quality of education/faculty research/job placements of the SPEP schools. 

If you want to get a job in an analytic-centered university, go to a Leiter school. If you want to get a job in a department that focuses on phenomenology/existentialism/feminism/race/etc., go to a grad school that focuses on those things. Of course schools like Oregon aren't placing people at Yale and Arizona-- the people who get their PhDs at most SPEP schools don't DO analytic philosophy, so why would they ever apply to those departments? 

When considering the "worth" of unranked programs (outside analytic phil), rather than thinking of it in terms of rankings, it makes more sense to think of it as (almost) different fields. And, for better or for worse, SPEP grads and analytic grads primarily stay within the kinds of departments they got their degrees from. 

Yea, along these lines...from speaking to multiple professors whose expertise is in continental philosophy (but do not take an analytic angle), it doesn't appear they have the perception that someone who knows a continental philosopher (e.g. Heidegger) and went to a highly ranked analytic program (e.g. Chicago) is superior to a student who knows continental and went to an unranked program. In other words, the default for continental ppl. seems to be that an individual who studied continental at an analytic school is suspect, until further notice. I'm not saying this is just, but it seems to be a common perception. 

Another point. Consider what would happen if continental programs, such as Oregon, DePaul, Penn State etc., hired heavily from top ranked analytic programs. Continental programs would start to lose prestige, since Phds wouldn't be getting hired. It makes sense that continental programs would have a sort of implicit agreement to hire amongst themselves. 

Edited February 16, 2017 by apophantic

[maxhgns]

1 hour ago, apophantic said:

 

Another point. Consider what would happen if continental programs, such as Oregon, DePaul, Penn State etc., hired heavily from top ranked analytic programs. Continental programs would start to lose prestige, since Phds wouldn't be getting hired. It makes sense that continental programs would have a sort of implicit agreement to hire amongst themselves. 

 

It's true that the unranked SPEP schools seem to be friendlier to graduates of the unranked SPEP departments than the ranked departments are. But it's not quite as true as you might think, or hope. Emory has 6/17 (35%) permanent faculty with PhDs from ranked departments (which would probably get counted as "primarily analytic"), DePaul 4/18 (22%), Memphis 6/11 (55%), Oklahoma 11/14 (79%--and just look at the schools: crazy prestige), Stony Brook 11/17 (65%), Vanderbilt 10/15 (67%). Those aren't all the programs, obviously, but it's a pretty large sample. It just goes to show that your advisor and training count for a lot, as does prestige and what you're actually hired to do. If a school tells you that they do a good job of placing into other "continental" schools, then check their placement data against the number of their graduates.

 

And don't forget that even though the unranked SPEP programs do seem to hire more (on average) from one another, they still don't hire all that often. The bulk of the hiring on the market comes from programs that are UG-only.