Monday, April 13, 2015

Blog CLXXX (180): The Numbers

In their reactions to the "Systematic Inequality" article, a number of people of have focused on the rankings of the various departments.  Some of them have objected to the practice, and I understand their position, a department that has a program in diplomatic history or Medieval history is going to carry a lot of weight in those fields, but not in Asian history if it has no people in that field, no matter its ranking.  I think it is silly to try and say you are only going to apply to schools in the top ten.  History departments are not exactly law schools or a MBA program.  

On the other hand, the rankings that Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore provide are an effort to measure prestige based on who is getting hired and where.  As I have said before, the ability to get a job with your degree is the acid test of a program.  As a result, I thought I would look not at the rankings, but at the total number of Ph.D.s that a school managed to place. If you look at the raw numbers of people placed at other Ph.D. granting schools, the advantage of the “Magic Eight” becomes very clear.  

It is worth noting that these rankings are not just based on sheer number of graduates employed.  Since Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore were trying to measure prestige, getting a Ph.D. placed at certain schools counts more than others.  (If you have reservations about the math, you should consult the original article.)  For now, I give your the number of placed Ph.D.s in the top 30 departments.  The totals are available for all 144, but I figured these statistics get the basic message across. They numbers are:

324
307
246
184
172
240
253
  43
108
128
180
173
162
  62
  74
  58
  25
  20
  62
  35
  49
  52
  61
  66
  69
  10
  25
  10
  61
  30

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