<p>Mini—if you compare the Foreign Policy rankings of undergraduate programs with the rankings for PhD programs, you’ll notice that they are almost identical. Yet, the rankings for master’s programs are quite different. Why do you think that is? I suggest that it indicates that academics (i.e., professors) are sufficiently familiar with graduate programs at competing institutions to draw significant distinctions between doctorate and masters programs–but not sufficiently familiar with undergraduate programs so they defaulted back to the rankings for doctorate programs. If they were just judging the quality of undergraduate programs as some have suggested, I would expect to see a lot more top rated LAC’s on the list. </p>
<p>It is not a all surprising to me that faculty are far more familiar with the quality of graduate programs than undergraduate programs.</p>