The Philosophy Premier League

The 'Philosophical Gourmet Report' has just been updated for 2009. This is a ranking of philosophy departments in the English-speaking world which is designed primarily to help students decide where the best place to do a PhD is. It's a peer survey based on the opinions of around 300 notable philosophers. Those surveyed rank departments according to the quality of their faculty members -- both overall and in various subdisciplines of philosophy. It's an odd cultural thing in philosophy, with many people being fascinated with how their department will fare in the next report. It's come to be tremendously influential in the philosophy world. The full rankings are here. 

The picture painted by the UK rankings (which are below the US ones on that page) is an odd one. Below the heavyweights, there is very little difference in the raw scores earned by departments. The differences between 6th and 14th are largely statistically insignificant, it seems, so it's difficult to read. 

Given the report's purpose, the 'speciality rankings' -- i.e. how good each department is in a given area -- are more important, since you want to do a PhD which is strong in your research areas. Leeds fares especially well in the philosophy of art and metaphysics rankings, which works well for me since those are two of my principal research interests. (It also works well for me that our department was recently awarded a major research grant in aesthetics, jointly with Nottingham, which will mean more PhD students and postdocs working in similar areas to me).

I guess that as well as serving as a guide to potential PhD students, the report serves to track reputations -- so it's an imperfect way of keeping track of how influential philosophers view the standard of different departments. Of course, it's imperfect in many ways (some worry that it tracks prestige rather than genuine quality, e.g. that Cambridge shouldn't be so high purely on the basis of its faculty quality).

For people like me who like statistics, lists and charts -- as well as philosophy -- it's all quite fascinating.

P.S. A quick glance at the US rankings tells you why it would have been such a big deal if I had gotten into Michigan...