Ranking Doctoral Programs by Placement: A New Method

W hile many bemoan the increasinglylarge role rankings play in Ameri-can higher education, their prominence and importance are indisputable. Such rankings have many different audiences, ranging from prospective undergraduates or graduate students, to foundations and government funders, to university admin-istrators identifying strengths and weak-nesses of their school. This diverse audience necessarily has varying hopes for what “quality ” is measured in school rankings, and different uses for the rank-ings themselves. But although there are currently a wide variety of ways to as-sess graduate school quality, most exist