relationship between department rank and college rank in engineering graduate program rankings conducted by U.S. News and World Report, The

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2003 by Vojak, Bruce A, Price, Raymond L, Carnahan, James V

It is very likely that the inconsistencies are a result of many years of effective reputation building by these colleges. At some level, this result of the top-five analysis is already internalized within our profession, as evidenced by the flow of promotional literature distributed by colleges of engineering shortly before the U.S. News and World Report annual call for rankings.

Turning to the transition probability analysis, clearly there are some very strong relationships observed between department rankings and college rankings, with the mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines having the strongest relationships to college ranking.

It is interesting to note that these two disciplines often have the largest numbers of students and faculty and have correspondingly large research budgets, both currently and integrated over time. The only other discipline that rivals these two for current size and dollars would be computer engineering, which is often operated jointly with electrical engineering or computer science. Computer science resides within some colleges of engineering but certainly not all of them.

Thus, it is possible that the disciplines that generate the most alumni and research finding will likely also be those that produce the largest number of engineering academic leaders who participate in these surveys. While we have not studied this quantitatively, one could argue that some of the observed results could be accounted for in this manner.

Further, it could also be argued that, given their size, these two disciplines represent the largest number of technical contributions to society in recent history. As such, the visibility of departments in these disciplines might easily draw attention to the engineering colleges that they comprise.

Inversely, disciplines representing typically two of the smallest departments in an engineering college, industrial engineering and bioengineering, exhibit the weakest relationships between departmental ranking and college ranking. This adds further credibility to the argument that discipline size, both current and integrated over time, is a key factor in determining which disciplines have the greatest impact on college ranking.

Note, however, that there are exceptions to this trend. Aeronautical engineering departments, for example, typically are relatively small. However, it is a discipline for which department rank is relatively closely related to college rank. Also, civil engineering, a discipline typically represented by larger departments, exhibits department rankings that are relatively less related to college rankings.

Obviously other factors contribute to the perceived reputation of an engineering college. One of the factors not explored in this research is the impact of the reputation of the overall university on the reputation of the college. Just as there is a relationship between college and department rankings, one would suspect that there is a relationship between college and university rankings. This question was not explored in the current paper but would be an interesting future study.