School Rankings, Department Rankings, and Individual Accomplishments

Abstract

The outcome of a graduate student's hunt for employment is often attributed to the student's own accomplishments, the reputation of the department, and the reputation of the university. In 2007, a national survey of psychology graduate students was conducted to assess accomplishments and experiences in graduate school, part of which was an assessment of employment after completion of the doctorate (PhD). Five hundred and fifty-one respondents who had applied for employment reported whether they had obtained employment and in what capacity. Survey results were then integrated with the National Research Council's most recent official ranking system of academic departments. The strongest predictor of employment was department-level rankings even while controlling for individual accomplishments, such as publications, posters, and teaching experience. Equally accomplished applicants for an employment position were not equal, apparently, if they graduated from differently ranked departments. The results also show the degree to which school-level rankings, department-level rankings, and individual accomplishments uniquely predict the various types of employment, including jobs at PhD-granting institutions, master's-granting institutions, liberal arts colleges, 2-year schools, outside academia, or no employment at all.

Do successful PhD outcomes reflect the research environment rather than academic ability?

“…The standing of a PhD supervisor directly influences [8] the future career trajectory, and number of citations, their students receive throughout their career. Also, the standing of a department influences the future employment chances of its PhD graduates, on average, more than the individual achievements of those students [13]. The impact of teacher quality is seen in other areas of education [20,21], although 'PhD supervisor quality' is assessed differently to teacher quality in school and undergraduate education.…”

“…Other factors, such as, the reputation of a department [ 9 ], the reputation the group leader [ 10 ], and access to resources and equipment [ 11 ], the number of full-professors on staff [ 12 ] influenced the research output of the academics involved in that group. Less information is available on the impact of student academic ability or prior research training on PhD outcomes: one analysis found that the reputation of a given department was more important for employment outcomes post-PhD than the accomplishments of the student during their studies [ 13 ]. Overall, the evidence available implies that the research environment may have an inordinate impact on the PhD student outcomes (e.g.…”

Employment Prospects of Graduates From Sino-Foreign Cooperative Universities in China

“…It can be inferred that graduates from SFCUs have few worries about employment. As some studies have argued, employment outcomes and occupational attainment are mainly affected not only by ascribed factors such as family background but also by achieved factors such as individual effort and university reputation (Chan, 2014;Stenstrom et al, 2013). Therefore, the high-quality employment outcomes of graduates from SFCUs depend on at least the following three determinants.…”

“…The second potential limitation is that the analysis did not address the interlinkage between pedagogy and employability because of its emphasis on the "outputs" of SFCUs. Further research should comprehensively explore the achieved factors, such as individual effort and university teaching (Chan, 2014;Stenstrom et al, 2013), which affect the employment outcomes of graduates from these nontraditional Chinese mixed-culture universities.…”

Ethno-racial Disparities in Canada’s Labour Market: the Case of Recent Graduates

“…First of all, most of them do not subdivide the visible-minority category into its subgroups, which is highly important due to the amount of heterogeneity within this single label. Secondly, the ones that do make more detailed subgroup distinctions base their research on very specific subsamples from which only "niche" conclusions can be made-such as region specific (Krahn & Maximova, 2005), university specific (Grayson, 2004), occupational industry specific (Li, 2012), level of education specific (Twa et al, 2017), or field of study specific (Stenstrom et al, 2013) among others. These types of studies are not as helpful in making conclusions on ethno-racial disparities in Canada's labour market as a whole, because they are too narrow.…”