PhD Ranking

I realise I haven't responded to several comments on a few posts prior to this one, but I couldn't help post this before I lose my luck and/or connection. I was and am so bored that I decided to play around with the ranking of MBAs around the world as created by FT (http://www.ft.com/) and then re-align them according to my interest. Nothing rocket science in here, but just glad to find out that it seems to reflect a decent ranking of the PhD programmes in management. Note that every column except the last is provided by FT but the basis for the values under Doctoral ranking and Research ranking are not useful per se. Doctoral ranking is based on the number of PhDs given out per year with some additional points given if the graduates join any of the top 50 institutes as faculty. I could have a thousand doctoral students coming out but that might be of no use if they are not good enough. I might have only 2 coming out and that doesn't mean that I am of the highest standard. Research ranking is based on the number of noteworthy publications. I might write a thousand research papers but that score is being attributed to the university where I work though it might be based on the dissertation I did while at another university or it could be done in collaboration with another prof from another univ (in which case both univs get a score). So I decided to jumble up numbers a bit and see how things might look if I gave a sizeable weight to the research ranking, an average weight to the 3 year ranking and then a marginal weight to the Doctoral ranking. If a univ has no doctoral program then it doesn't count and hence its Doctoral rank is -0.01. If a univ has never been ranked before then it needs to be looked at cautiously and hence, its 3 year rank is -0.1. So here are the scores:




Undoubtedly, if a univ. hasn't been ranked earlier and now receives a 2008 rank of 17 (as is the case with Hong Kong UST) then it might seem better than a univ ranked 60 in 2007 and 70 now. We need to realise that the rankings are for MBA and not for PhD. Hence, the ranking should offer a mild weight to the final score. So I decided to tweak the weights a bit and gave the highest weight to the combination of PhD and Research ranking (a 1 for Manchester cannot make it better than Univ. of Chicago's 7 given that the latter has a better ranking and a 7 even for Research, while Manchester is a poor 76 for Research). The Research ranking does reveal the environment for professional development and academic/intellectual curiosity and hence, cannot be taken lightly. INSEAD should be higher than Univ. of Maryland since its ranking is far superior and hence (IMO) augers well for students who wish to be taught in the midst of vibrant research. In order to attract the best MBA students, one does need the best faculty and they in turn require a place where they can do wonderful research and have good access to the industry as well as academia. So here is another list which I think is closer to what might be a ranking of PhDs.



And in case you are wondering why am I doing all of this, I frankly don't know. I was truly bored and didn't find a better way to spend my time. :-)