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Boston University was one of 222 institutions that participated in the third National Research Council (NRC) Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs. This study was initiated in the Fall of 2005, and was designed to:

  1. Assist universities in improving the quality of their current practices in doctoral education via benchmarking.
  2. Make information regarding doctoral programs (nationwide) readily available and accessible to not only potential students, but also to the public through a web-based database that will be supplemented by an analysis summary report.
  3. Strengthen the caliber of the nation’s research as a whole.

The goal of this NRC assessment is to create a system by which it can rank and rate doctoral research programs, which will allow for comparisons to be made between similar programs around the United States. By nature, this information is useful to not only students, but also to administrators, policy makers and researchers alike. There have been two similar studies conducted by the NRC, one in 1983 and the other in 1995. The most current study was authorized in 2005. The NRC began collecting data in July of 2006.  The process required multiple steps, including:

  1. The use of questionnaires to collect quantitative data from institutions, faculty, etc. regarding the quality and character of doctoral research programs.
  2. The collection of data on publications, citations, and dissertation keywords.
  3. The use of the accumulated data to create and a construct a ratings systems that will include a quantitative method of estimating program quality.

The NRC received data on a total of 41 doctoral programs housed at Boston University. Central data was provided by Institutional Research (IR) and verified via web form by the academic departments. Data kept at the department level was collected by IR via the web, and submitted to the NRC on behalf of the University. Faculty names, specializations, and dissertations were collected from their departments and also submitted to the NRC by IR. These lists were used by the NRC to randomly survey faculty about peer program quality and to collect faculty scholarly activity data from external sources such as ISI. In specific instances, responses were collected from multiple departments and merged to form a single field for insertion in the NRC taxonomy.