Top 25 US ag econ department faculty PhD alma mater and alumni affiliation table

[SSh]

The table can be read column-wise and row-wise. For each of the top 25 U.S. agricultural economics departments, each column counts the number of enlisted faculty by doctoral alma mater corresponding to the department listed in a given row. Each row, inversely, counts where the doctoral alumni of each department are affiliated to as tenured/tenure-track faculty within the top 25 U.S. agricultural economics departments.

 

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Notes:

1. The ranking is based on REPEC's agricultural economics department rankings, as of April 2020.

2. The figures are based on the faculty listing in the respective department's website, as of May 26, 2020.

3. The figures only count the number of tenured/tenure-track professors in each department, excluding non-tenure-track faculty (visiting professors, research professors, clinical professors, professors of practice, adjunct professors, lecturers, and instructors). In addition, emeritus professors are also counted.

4. "General Econ" counts faculty who have a (general/non agricultural) economics Ph.D. degree. Environmental (and natural resource) economics degrees, traditionally not lumped together with agricultural economics departments (Yale, Duke, U Mass) are provided their own rows. "Canadian Ag Econ" counts faculty who have a Ph.D. degree from a Canadian agricultural economics department. "Other U.S. Ag Econ" counts faculty whose Ph.D. alma mater is other than the 25 listed. "Non-Econ" counts faculty who have a Ph.D. degree in a discipline other than economics (most commonly, law, public policy, statistics, engineering, and environmental science, among others).

5. All tenured/tenure-track faculty are counted for Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and Management. Only agricultural economics faculty are counted for Iowa State's Department of Economics. Similarly, only agricultural economics faculty are counted for Penn State's Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education.

6. Washington State University graduates are counted under "Other U.S. Ag Econ".

7. A crucial limitation of the statistics is that they do not account for the temporal variation of the alumni graduation years. Some departments were at their peak in certain years in the past, and their figures are over-represented by their graduates from those specific years, despite their graduates not landing tenure-track faculty positions in recent years, and vice-versa.

[SSh]

I spent some time creating this table, thanks to more free time lately. Let me know if certain things need to be changed. I know there are certain inaccuracies (counting everyone for Cornell but not counting everyone at Penn State and Iowa State for example).

 

 

Some (loose) observations:

- Higher ranked ag econ programs tend to hire more from general econ departments. This practice goes down as we move more to the right of the table.

- Higher ranked ag econ programs tend to hire from lower ranked ag econ programs, more than lower ranked ag econ programs tend to (see Cornell or Michigan State versus Texas A&M and Kansas State).

 

 

Anyway, I was wondering why Georgia, although higher in ranking than 12 others in table, has worse stats in terms of graduates involved in top 25 ag econ depts as tenured/tenure-track faculty? I heard they were ranked significantly lower before the 2010s and have tremendously improved in quality in the last 5-10 years. Is that a reason? Just curious!

[Bayes]

This is quite insightful, thanks!