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Of course, we can trust these rankings for what they are supposed to measure => if someone were to repeat the exercise by considering the number of papers published in a certain set of journals during a certain period of time and attribute the authorship to universities in a particular manner then I am sure s/he would land with results similar to what UT Dallas has and hence to that extent, we should trust the rankings in the sense that they are not fabricated or made-up. Having said that I personally would not agree with the rankings that are presented here IF THEY ARE MEANT TO BE A REFLECTION OF THE STRENGTH OF THEIR PHD PROGRAMS. Some of the most glaring inconsistencies that I see are:
University of Maryland at College Park at #7;
Stanford University GSB at #11 &
the worst of them all, Haas @ California Berkeley at #25.
Frankly either the rankings of US News or Business Week would align more closely with what people generally believe are the rankings of the strengths of the PhD programs.
The best measure which one might have to construct on his/ her own for the discipline one is interested in is to look at the placements of the students graduating from a program in a certain period of time and weight them in a particular way, e.g. tenure-track faculty position at HBS > tenure-track faculty position at UT Dallas > non-tenure track faculty position at NCSU (or some such order!)
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