Welcome to UA's NRC page!

UA Results are here  . . . finally. . . 
And revised April 2011....

The Buzz and Tools:

• Chronicle
  April 21, 2011
  Once More, With Feeling: National Research Council Unveils Revised Doctoral Rankings
  The National Research Council released on Thursday a revised edition of its 2010 rankings of American doctoral programs that corrects four types of errors discovered in the original report, which was issued last September. ...In the revised edition, almost all programs' positions on the council's "ranges of rankings" have changed at least slightly, but in most cases the changes are not substantial. In a few academic fields, however, the numbers have changed significantly for at least 20 percent of the programs. Those include geography, linguistics, and operations research....

• Chronicle 
  September 28, 2010
  An Elaborate Ranking of Doctoral Programs Makes Its Long-Awaited Debut
  Now it can be told. The American doctoral program with the longest median time-to-degree is the music program at Washington University in St. Louis: 16.3 years.

  That's just one of a quarter million data points that appear in the National Research Council's new report on doctoral education in the United States, which was finally unveiled Tuesday afternoon after years of delay. (The Chronicle has published an interactive tool that allows readers to compare doctoral programs across 21 variables.). . .

• Inside Higher Ed
  
  You're Not No. 1
  September 28, 2010
  WASHINGTON -- The advance briefing for reporters covering today's release of the National Research Council's ratings of doctoral programs may have made history as the first time a group doing rankings held a news conference at which it seemed to be largely trying to write them off.

  While the NRC committee that produced the rankings defended its efforts and the resulting mass of data on doctoral programs now available, no one on the committee endorsed the actual rankings, and committee members went out of their way to say that there might well be better ways to rank -- better than either of the two methods unveiled. . . .
   
• PhDs.org
  Find the Graduate School That's Right for You 
  Rank and search 18,505 programs at 1,958 US universities based on your priorities
  Our unique information comes from the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, and the National Center for Education Statistics. Learn more about our data. . . .
   
• Science
  

  Perhaps it should be called the Mr. Potato Head of graduate school rankings.

  Remember how easy it was to alter the appearance of that toy's bland, tubular face by sticking an ear or an eye in an unexpected place? Well, the latest analysis of the quality of U.S. research doctoral programs by the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC) can be manipulated in much the same way. But the exercise is hardly child's play....

Full results and interactive website as well as other resources at the NRC site.

See latest powerpoint from NRC and overview from June CGS Communicator.

Here is our powerpoint to provost and deans. 

We prepared a tutorial on how to understand your results.

List of variables in study.

We will be working to summarize the UA data and will be setting up workshops to help you understand and use the results.  Watch this site for more information.

NRC will NOT result in a simple ranking of programs!  Rather, they will release "ranges of rankings."  See our short explanation of methodology.

Contact Dianne Horgan or Tom Rhodes for further information.