School Rankings
Economics Department
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, MA 01075
Phone: (413) 538-2432
Fax: (413) 538-2512
jhartley@mtholyoke.edu
mirobins@mtholyoke.edu
We would like to thank Robert Costrell, Eva Paus, and Stephen Perez for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
In this paper we present a comprehensive ranking of all national liberal arts colleges based on publications in all JEL listed journals from 1989-1994. We ranked all the schools listed as national liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News & World Report College Guide (1989).
In this paper we present a comprehensive ranking of all national liberal arts colleges based on publications in all JEL listed journals from 1989-1994. Several conclusions can be drawn from the data presented below. The faculty at many national liberal arts colleges do engage in some research; we identified over 100 national liberal arts colleges with faculty publications. On the other hand, most of the publications are concentrated among a few schools; the top 16 colleges are responsible for over half the publications. The bulk of the research, perhaps not surprisingly, is concentrated among journals that are not highly ranked and which are less technical, less neoclassical and aimed at broader audiences than the most highly ranked economics journals.
Since the faculty of liberal arts colleges devote themselves to teaching as well as to research, an evaluation of the research output of a department may be an imperfect guide to the overall quality of the department. However, there is a widespread belief that teaching and research are complementary activities. Teaching the latest discoveries in classes, supervising student theses and other research, and preparing students for graduate school are some of the teaching activities that may be enhanced by faculty research.
Even if there is doubt about the relationship between research and teaching, rankings based solely on research should be of interest since in recent years research has been given more emphasis at liberal arts colleges. The rankings below will thus be of use to economics departments interested in the overall pattern of publications at liberal arts colleges as they evaluate the research volume of junior members of the department. Similarly, new Ph.D.'s on the job market might be interested in the research environment at liberal arts colleges in general or at particular colleges. Finally, departments at liberal arts colleges might be interested in knowing how their research compares to that of comparable schools.
There is now a large literature ranking economics departments in terms of publication records. Most of these rankings have focused on Ph.D. granting institutions (e.g., Conroy, Dusansky, Drukker and Kildegaard (1995), Davis and Papanek (1984) and Baumann, Werden, and Williams (1987)). There have also been rankings of schools granting a terminal Master's degree (Blair, Cottle and Wallace (1986)) and of all schools publishing in top journals (Graves, Marchand and Thompson (1982)). However, very little attention has been paid to research at liberal arts schools.
Blair, Cottle and Wallace (1986) do report citations for publications from 12 liberal arts schools.[1] They note that in terms of total citations, the highest ranked of these 12 schools would rank 76 on a comparable Ph.D. list, while in terms of per capita citations, the highest ranked liberal arts school would rank 33 in the Ph.D. list. Similarly, in the Graves, Marchand, and Thompson (1982) rankings of number of pages in the top 24 journals, the highest ranked liberal arts school ranked 77. Finally, the report of the Committee of College Faculty and the Oberlin Conference (Kasper et. al. (1991)) broadly examined the research activities of liberal arts faculty, concluding, "On paper it appears that the current liberal arts faculty is involved in the same activities as faculty at top tier universities, but not as much or as deeply" (p. 1102).
We ranked all the schools listed as national liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News & World Report College Guide (1989). Schools are ranked by the number of articles published between 1989 and 1994 as listed in the Journal of Economic Literature. While all of the previous publication based rankings have focused on "top" journals, our rankings are based on all the journals covered in the JEL. We believe this more comprehensive base is particularly important for evaluating the work of faculty at liberal arts colleges. As noted by Kasper et. al. (1991), liberal arts faculty tend to publish less in the relatively technical journals and more in the applied and field journals. We used EconLit to search the JEL database to find all articles that listed a given school as an author's affiliation.[2]
Since our rankings are based only on articles published in journals catalogued by The Journal of Economic Literature, they should be interpreted as research published in these economic journals, not total research output of the department. Given the nature of liberal arts faculty, we would expect a fair amount of both interdisciplinary research (which might be published in a non-economic journal) and writings for non-academic journals, neither of which would be contained in our data set. In addition, liberal arts faculty are actively engaged in writing both academic books and textbooks, which are also not included in our rankings.
The rankings are listed in Table 1. Schools are ranked in four ways: 1) by the number of times the school is listed as an author affiliation (column 1); 2) with an adjustment for the number of co-authors (e.g., a paper with two authors is counted as one-half of an article for each of the affiliated schools) (column 2); 3) with an adjustment made for the quality of the journal (column 3); and 4) with an adjustment for the number of economics faculty at the school (column 4).[3] The quality adjustment gives a weight of 1 to journals ranked 1-20 on the basis of impact adjusted citations to articles published 1985-1989 by Laband and Piette (1994), 0.8 to journals ranked 21-40, 0.6 to journals ranked 41-60, 0.4 to journals ranked 61-80, and 0.2 to all lower ranked or unranked journals. Without a quality adjustment a paper in a low ranked journal is given as much weight in the rankings as a paper in a top ranked journal; while rough, this quality adjustment corrects for this equivalence.[4]
Table 1 shows that the publications are concentrated among a few schools. The top 5 colleges are responsible for nearly 20 percent of the articles and the top 16 for over 50 percent, while 14 colleges had only 2 publications, and 22 had only one. Twenty-nine colleges (not listed) had no publications.[5] Overall, only 50 colleges averaged at least one article per year.
The first three rankings are fairly consistent, but there are some small departments with a modest number of publications that rank high in the scale adjusted for the number of economics faculty. There are a number of highly ranked departments in our list that were are not ranked in Blair, Cottle and Wallace (1986) or Graves Marchand and Thompson (1982). Similarly, some of the highly ranked departments are at schools ranked low in the U.S. News rankings of overall school quality.
Since rankings of graduate programs confine themselves to publications in top journals, Table 2 presents rankings based only on publications in the top 50 journals. Schools are ranked both by number of articles and number of articles adjusted by department size. Table 2 also indicates how many of these articles were in the top 25 journals. Only 30 colleges had at least three publications in the top 50 journals and only 10 colleges had at least three articles in the top 25 journals. Eight colleges are responsible for 50 percent of the publications in the top 25 journals. Comparing Tables 1 and 2, several schools seem to concentrate more heavily on publications in more highly rated journals as is evidenced by a high ranking in Table 2 and a relatively low ranking in Table 1.
Since it is clear that liberal arts faculty do not primarily publish in top journals, it is interesting to see where they do publish. The distribution of articles among journal quality tiers is shown in Table 3. These numbers are similar to those compiled from the more limited sample used by Kasper et. al. (1991). Only 5 percent of all the articles published by liberal arts faculty were in the top 20 journals while 63 percent were in journals ranked lower than 80 or not ranked at all.
Since our data set includes all liberal arts colleges and all JEL listed journals, we can compute the number of articles published by liberal arts faculty in each journal. Table 4 lists all journals with 10 or more publications of liberal arts faculty.[6] Liberal arts faculty seem to be more heavily published in journals for which the audience is not a neoclassical economist interested in technical economic questions. As evidence, we see a large number of non-neoclassical journals (Review of Radical Political Economics, Journal of Economic Issues, Public Choice, Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics) and policy oriented journals (Challenge, World Development, National Tax Journal, Comparative Economic Studies). Not surprisingly, liberal arts faculty also seem relatively interested in education (Journal of Economic Education, Economics of Education Review).
Only 5 of the top 40 ranked journals published 10 or more articles written by authors at liberal arts colleges. Robinson (1992) computed an institutional concentration ratio for each of the top ten journals (according to Leibowitz and Palmer (1982)) from 1988 to 1990 to see from how wide a base the journal draws its authors. The two journals with the lowest concentration ratios were Review of Economics and Statistics and The American Economic Review; interestingly, these are the only two of these top ten journals to appear in Table 4.
In this paper we have presented a comprehensive ranking of national liberal arts colleges based on publications in all JEL listed journals from 1989-1994. On the one hand, our results suggest that there is no such thing as a "typical" liberal arts college economics department. Many colleges are highly active in research and have a number of publications in highly ranked journals. At other colleges, the faculty, while engaging in some research, are not particularly active nor do they publish in highly rated journals. However, a large number of schools have published at least some JEL listed articles. These articles are occasionally in highly rated journals, but more often they are in non-neoclassical or policy oriented journals.
Bibliography
Baumann, Michael G., Gregory J. Werden and Michael A. Williams (1987), "Rankings of Economics Departments by Fields," American Economist, Spring, pp. 56-61.
Blair, Dudley W., Rex L. Cottle and Myles S. Wallace (1986), "Faculty Ratings of Major Economics Departments by Citations: An Extension," The American Economic Review, Vol. 76, No. 1, March, pp. 264-267.
Conroy, Michael E., Richard Dusansky, David Drukker and Arne Kildegaard (1995), "Publication Productivity of Major 1992 Economics Departments in Mainstream Journals from 1987 to 1991," Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming.
Davis, Paul and Gustav F. Papanek (1984), "Faculty Ratings of Major Economics Departments by Citations," The American Economic Review, Vol. 74, No. 1, March, pp. 225-230.
Graves, Philip E., James R. Marchand and Randall Thompson (1982), "Economics Department Rankings: Research Incentives, Constraints, and Efficiency," The American Economic Review, Vol. 72, No. 5, December, pp. 1131-1141.
Kasper et al. (1991), "The Education of Economists: From Undergraduate to Graduate Study," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXIX, September, pp. 1088-1109.
Laband, David N. and Michael J. Piette (1994), "The Relative Impacts of Economics Journals: 1970-1990," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXII, June, pp. 640-666.
Leibowitz, S.J. and J.P. Palmer (1984), "Assessing the Relative Impacts of Economics Journals," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXII, March, pp. 77-88.
Robinson, Michael D. (1992), "Job Quality, Publications, Tenure and Training: More on Ranking Economics Departments," Working Paper, Mount Holyoke College.
U.S. News & World Report (1989), America's Best Colleges, Washington, D.C.: U.S. News & World Report.
Number Author Adj. Quality Adj. Dept. Size Adj.
School (1) (2) (3) (4)
Rank N Rank N Rank N Rank N
Williams College 1 47 3 30.2 1 22.8 17 2.4
Wellesley College 2 41 2 31.7 2 16.2 17 2.4
Colby College 3 39 5 28.0 6 14.0 2 3.7
Trinity College 4 38 4 29.8 3 15.6 2 3.7
Wesleyan University 4 38 1 31.8 4 15.4 7 3.2
Colgate University 6 37 6 27.3 4 15.4 13 2.5
Middlebury College 6 37 7 26.7 8 13.2 8 3.1
Hamilton College 8 31 9 22.2 7 13.4 4 3.4
Claremont McKenna College 9 30 10 20.7 10 11.4 5 3.3
Bowdoin College 10 27 11 20.3 9 12.8 21 2.3
Hobart & William Smith 10 27 12 19.8 22 6.8 11 2.6
College
Union College 10 27 15 18.0 12 10.6 26 2.1
Swarthmore College 13 25 8 22.5 16 9.2 9 2.8
Grinnell College 14 23 16 17.2 11 10.8 5 3.3
Lafayette College 14 23 13 18.5 15 9.6 28 2.0
Smith College 14 23 14 18.3 19 8.2 40 1.4
Amherst College 17 22 17 16.0 13 10.0 24 2.2
Mount Holyoke College 18 21 21 14.0 18 8.4 24 2.2
Oberlin College 19 20 19 15.2 21 7.2 13 2.5
Denison University 20 19 24 11.8 13 10.0 17 2.4
Vassar College 20 19 21 14.0 27 4.4 35 1.7
College of the Holy Cross 22 18 20 14.3 16 9.2 44 1.3
Skidmore College 22 18 18 16.0 25 5.0 11 2.6
Occidental College 24 17 26 11.5 27 4.4 17 2.4
Washington & Lee University 25 16 26 11.5 38 3.2 28 2.0
Pomona College 26 15 24 11.8 19 8.2 32 1.8
St Lawrence University 26 15 23 13.5 23 5.4 26 2.1
Franklin & Marshal College. 28 14 29 11.3 27 4.4 32 1.8
Allegheny College 29 13 38 7.0 41 3.0 40 1.4
Bucknell University 29 13 30 10.8 26 4.8 48 1.2
College of Wooster 29 13 26 11.5 35 3.4 38 1.6
Lake Forest College 29 13 34 8.0 38 3.2 31 1.9
Hendrix College 33 12 31 10.0 35 3.4 1 4.0
Dickinson College 34 11 35 7.5 34 3.6 38 1.6
Mills College 35 10 45 5.7 38 3.2 13 2.5
St. Olaf College 35 10 35 7.5 44 2.6 67 0.7
Barnard College 37 9 33 8.5 27 4.4 63 0.8
Bates College 37 9 32 9.0 24 5.2 44 1.3
DePauw University 37 9 35 7.5 31 4.2 50 1.0
Agnes Scott College 40 8 42 6.5 52 1.8 10 2.7
Gettysburg College 40 8 38 7.0 48 2.0 50 1.0
Reed College 40 8 38 7.0 35 3.4 21 2.3
Willamette University 40 8 48 4.7 43 2.8 49 1.1
Bard College 44 7 43 6.3 56 1.6 32 1.8
Carleton College 44 7 43 6.3 48 2.0 63 0.8
Kalamazoo College 44 7 55 3.8 59 1.4 40 1.4
Macalester College 44 7 38 7.0 46 2.2 61 0.9
Ursinus College 44 7 50 4.0 31 4.2 35 1.7
Wheaton College (MA) 44 7 46 5.0 41 3.0 40 1.4
Bryn Mawr College 50 6 47 4.8 52 1.8 50 1.0
Kenyon College 50 6 58 3.0 48 2.0 61 0.9
Davidson College 52 5 49 4.5 46 2.2 70 0.6
Hamline University 52 5 66 2.5 68 1.0 70 0.6
Hampshire College 52 5 58 3.0 68 1.0 13 2.5
Lewis & Clark College 52 5 57 3.2 56 1.6 50 1.0
Rhodes College 52 5 50 4.0 52 1.8 35 1.7
Western Maryland College 52 5 50 4.0 33 4.0 50 1.0
Connecticut College 58 4 58 3.0 72 0.8 75 0.5
Drew University 58 4 50 4.0 72 0.8 67 0.7
Goucher College 58 4 65 2.7 56 1.6 63 0.8
Millsaps College 58 4 76 1.8 45 2.4 44 1.3
Randolph-Macon Woman's 58 4 56 3.5 72 0.8 44 1.3
College
S.U.N.Y., Purchase 58 4 50 4.0 52 1.8 50 1.0
Virginia Military Institute 58 4 58 3.0 59 1.4 81 0.4
Centenary College 65 3 68 2.3 80 0.6 21 2.3
Gustavus Adolphus College 65 3 58 3.0 59 1.4 87 0.3
Hampden-Sydney College 65 3 58 3.0 80 0.6 75 0.5
Haverford College 65 3 66 2.5 64 1.2 67 0.7
Hollins College 65 3 69 2.0 59 1.4 63 0.8
Hope College 65 3 69 2.0 64 1.2 70 0.6
Sweet Briar College 65 3 77 1.5 59 1.4 50 1.0
Wabash College 65 3 84 1.3 72 0.8 70 0.6
Washington College 65 3 58 3.0 80 0.6 70 0.6
Albion College 74 2 77 1.5 72 0.8 87 0.3
Beloit College 74 2 69 2.0 80 0.6 87 0.3
Centre College 74 2 69 2.0 64 1.2 81 0.4
Colorado College 74 2 85 1.0 86 0.4 98 0.2
Earlham College 74 2 77 1.5 86 0.4 81 0.4
Eckerd College 74 2 69 2.0 86 0.4 75 0.5
Furman Univ. 74 2 85 1.0 48 2.0 87 0.3
Goshen College 74 2 85 1.0 86 0.4 50 1.0
Houghton College 74 2 77 1.5 86 0.4 28 2.0
Knox College 74 2 77 1.5 86 0.4 81 0.4
Oglethorpe Univ. 74 2 69 2.0 72 0.8 50 1.0
Pitzer College 74 2 77 1.5 80 0.6 98 0.2
Scripps College 74 2 69 2.0 86 0.4 50 1.0
Wheaton College (IL) 74 2 77 1.5 64 1.2 75 0.5
Alma College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
Austin College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 98 0.2
Bennington College 88 1 103 0.5 94 0.2 50 1.0
Birmingham-Southern College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
Gordon College 88 1 103 0.5 94 0.2 105 0.1
Guilford College 88 1 85 1.0 72 0.8 n.a n.a.
.
Hanover College 88 1 103 0.5 94 0.2 87 0.3
Hartwick College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
King College 88 1 103 0.5 80 0.6 75 0.5
Lawrence University 88 1 103 0.5 94 0.2 98 0.2
Luther College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
Manhattanville College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 n.a n.a.
.
Marymount Manhattan College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 n.a n.a.
.
Muhlenberg College 88 1 85 1.0 68 1.0 98 0.2
Nebraska Wesleyan University 88 1 103 0.5 72 0.8 81 0.4
Ripon College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
Sarah Lawrence College 88 1 103 0.5 86 0.4 75 0.5
St John's University (MN) 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 n.a n.a.
.
University of the South 88 1 103 0.5 94 0.2 98 0.2
Washington & Jefferson 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 87 0.3
College
Wells College 88 1 85 1.0 94 0.2 81 0.4
Whitman College 88 1 85 1.0 68 1.0 98 0.2
School Number of Articles in Number of
Articles in Top 50 Articles in
Top 50 Journals Top 25
Journals Adjusted Journals
for
Department
Size
Rank Number Rank Number
Williams College 1 17 4 0.9 12
Wellesley College 2 13 11 0.8 5
Colgate University 3 11 17 0.7 1
Wesleyan University 3 11 4 0.9 2
Denison University 5 10 1 1.3 1
Middlebury College 5 10 11 0.8 3
Colby College 7 9 4 0.9 1
Amherst College 8 8 11 0.8 3
Bowdoin College 8 8 17 0.7 1
Claremont McKenna College 8 8 4 0.9 1
Grinnell College 8 8 2 1.1 3
Hamilton College 8 8 4 0.9 1
Mount Holyoke College 8 8 11 0.8 0
Pomona College 8 8 4 0.9 4
Trinity College 8 8 11 0.8 3
Union College 8 8 20 0.6 0
College of the Holy Cross 17 6 31 0.4 2
Lafayette College 17 6 24 0.5 2
Smith College 17 6 31 0.4 0
Barnard College 20 5 24 0.5 2
Bates College 20 5 17 0.7 3
Swarthmore College 20 5 20 0.6 4
DePauw University 23 4 31 0.4 0
Oberlin College 23 4 24 0.5 2
St Lawrence University 23 4 20 0.6 0
Ursinus College 23 4 4 0.9 1
Western Maryland College 23 4 11 0.8 3
Bucknell University 28 3 37 0.3 1
Millsaps College 28 3 3 1.0 0
Willamette University 28 3 31 0.4 0
Davidson College 31 2 37 0.3 0
Dickinson College 31 2 37 0.3 1
Franklin & Marshall College 31 2 37 0.3 0
Furman University 31 2 37 0.3 2
Hollins College 31 2 24 0.5 0
Reed College 31 2 20 0.6 1
Skidmore College 31 2 37 0.3 1
Wheaton College (IL) 31 2 24 0.5 1
Wheaton College (MA) 31 2 31 0.4 2
Albion College 39 1 47 0.2 0
Bryn Mawr College 39 1 47 0.2 0
Carleton College 39 1 54 0.1 1
Guilford College 39 1 n.a n.a. 0
.
Gustavus Adolphus College 39 1 54 0.1 1
Haverford College 39 1 47 0.2 0
Hendrix College 39 1 37 0.3 0
Hobart & William Smith 39 1 54 0.1 0
College
Hope College 39 1 47 0.2 0
King College 39 1 24 0.5 0
Lewis & Clark College 39 1 47 0.2 0
Mills College 39 1 37 0.3 0
Muhlenberg College 39 1 47 0.2 1
Nebraska Wesleyan University 39 1 31 0.4 0
Occidental College 39 1 54 0.1 0
Oglethorpe University 39 1 24 0.5 0
Rhodes College 39 1 37 0.3 0
S.U.N.Y., Purchase 39 1 37 0.3 1
St Olaf College 39 1 54 0.1 0
Vassar College 39 1 54 0.1 0
Whitman College 39 1 47 0.2 1
Journal Tier* Number Percent
1 57 5.3
2 125 11.6
3 128 11.9
4 82 7.6
5 681 63.5
*Journal tiers based on rankings by Laband and Piette (1994):
1: Journals ranked 1-20 on the basis of impact adjusted citations to articles published in 1985-1989
2: Journals ranked 21-40
3: Journals ranked 41-60
4: Journals ranked 61-80
5: All lower ranked or unranked journals
Journal Title Number Eastern Economic Journal 40 Review of Radical Political Economics 33 Journal of Economic Issues 31 Journal of Economic Education 30 Review of Economics and Statistics 26 Economics Letters 25 Comparative Economic Studies 23 World Development 21 Challenge 19 American Economic Review 19 Southern Economic Journal 18 Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics 17 Public Choice 17 American Journal of Economics 17 Economics of Education Review 16 Journal of Environmental Economics 14 Industrial Relations 14 Industrial and Labor Relations Review 13 History of Political Economy 13 Journal of Developing Areas 12 Journal of Economic History 12 Journal of Macroeconomics 11 National Tax Journal 11 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 11 Journal of Comparative Economics 10 Atlantic Economic Journal 10 Economic Inquiry 10 Explorations in Economic History 10
Economics