Assessing program strength

[kyledavid80]

<p>Does anyone know of a good resource (a past thread, or another site) that describes how to assess the strength of a given program? Or, better yet, does anyone have suggestions for criteria? I’m attempting to assess the strength of linguistics programs in the top 50 schools, and would like to see criteria used for either linguistics or programs in general, or both.</p>

<p>Some ideas:</p>

<p>Course offerings
Breadth/depth of instruction in certain areas (within the program itself)
Professor credentials + teaching ability (ratemyprofessors.com, I think)
Success of grads
Research (opportunities, facilities, etc.)
Paper output?</p>

<p>Specific to linguistics: breadth/depth of language; language tables; language houses; community activity in linguistics; heterogeneity of students in terms of language</p>

<p>Any other ideas, for either?</p>

[kyledavid80]

<p>Any takers?</p>

[warblersrule]

<p>

@carolyn

Some things I look for are:</p>

<ul>
<li>department accreditation by a professional association related to the subject, </li>
<li>faculty size compared to the number of graduating majors in the department </li>
<li>where grads of the department go on to graduate school or employment</li>
<li>any recent or pending changes in funding for the department (search the school’s press releases, and the student newspaper archives), </li>
<li>special facilities or capabilities of the department (department library, research facilities, special equipment, etc.)</li>
<li>how many prof’s in the department are tenured, how many are full-time, how many are just visiting or are not tenured. </li>
<li>the philosophy or subject approach of the department. This can take some digging, and you may have to put some divergent pieces together to see if the department’s goals/philosophies are a fit with yours. Two equally sized departments at different schools can have very different approaches.</li>
<li>I also like to get a hold of the actual course schedules (not the catalog which merely lists courses that may or may not be offered on a regular basis) for a few semesters and see how many classes the department typically offers, how large or small they are, and whether they fill up quickly or are over-subscribed. A department is only good if you can get into classes without too much trouble. </li>
</ul>

<p>Another piece of advice that I also find helpful came from the Philosophical Gourmet site, which ranks Philosophy graduate programs but also has a section discussing how to evaluate undergrad programs, is to (1) find the rankings for top graduate level programs (these are usually more readily available) and then (2) look at the faculty bio’s and see how many received their doctorates from the top grad programs. Of course, at large universities, you’ll also need to find out how many of those faculty actually teach undergraduates.

Since you’re in California, I’d recommend UCLA in particular. They have a superb program, and they’re stealing a famous linguistics professor (Craig Melchert) from UNC Chapel Hill next year.</p>