Given the University's recent jump in graduate school rankings, it is time for administrators to consider how they want to continue and expand upon this progress as the University moves into the 21st century.
Such was the message imparted to the Board of Trustees this weekend by Provost John Strohbehn. Strohbehn delivered to the board a presentation about new National Research Council graduate school rankings, in which he discussed the correlation between faculty size and the rankings. Generally, he said, the more faculty a department has, the higher the ranking it will receive.
The rankings, released in mid-September, show that the University has made a great deal of progress in terms of academic reputation since 1982, the last time the National Research Council conducted its study. That year, the University ranked in the top 20 in eight fields, while in 1993--the year the most recent survey was conducted--it boasted top-20 placement in 18 fields. The number of fields ranking in the top 10 jumped from three to eight.
The rankings are determined by surveying faculty in graduate schools across the country and asking them to evaluate various programs on the basis of scholarly quality, educational effectiveness and the change in program quality over the years.
Because the humanities, specifically English and comparative literature, had received the highest financial priority since the last time the rankings were done, these areas had moved up most significantly in the rankings, Strohbehn said. In 1982, comparative literature was ranked 18th and English 27th, but in 1993, they had jumped to second and fifth, respectively.
In the 1993 study, the social sciences, physical sciences and engineering disciplines were not ranked as high as programs at the top quarter of private colleges and universities nationally. While the biological sciences did show improvement, they still did not reach the level of the humanities.
Strohbehn said that because the University does not have the resources to put all of its departments in the top 10 or 20 programs nationally, administrators and department heads must decide which departments to prioritize and move ahead with those goals in mind.
"It is important to realize, however, that we do not have all the breadth across all disciplines compared to other schools whose names we don't like to mention," he said. To accomplish this goal, the University must make a concerted effort to recruit top people in the fields it wishes to strengthen, he said.
In his address to the board, Jim Siedow, chair of the Academic Council, also lauded the University's improvement in the NRC rankings. Given the current atmosphere in Washington, however, funding to keep these programs growing may soon grow scarce, Siedow said.
"The paradigm by which research universities have grown and prospered since [World War II] is currently changing," he said. "Research universities are no longer unquestionably viewed as being inherently good from a larger societal standpoint." To this end, it is more important than ever for researchers to prove the validity and relevance of their research and explain why they deserve government funding, he said.
IN OTHER BUSINESS: The board listened to the annual progress report from the chair of the Duke University Management Company. Truman Semans, who took over July 1 as head of the company, reported favorable overall returns for the 1994-95 fiscal year. DUMAC, a non-profit corporation formed by the board five years ago, is charged with investing the University's $1.6 billion in assets.
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