Group 1
Oxford University
University of Notre Dame
Group 2
Saint Louis University
Group 3
Purdue University
Group 4
Cornell University
Group 5
Baylor University
Claremont Graduate School
Fordham University
Georgetown University
Indiana University, Bloomington
University of California, Riverside
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of New England
University of Oklahoma, Norman
University of Rochester
University of St. Andrews
University of Texas, Austin
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Yale University
Looking at the rankings it's interesting that Rutgers didn't make the list this time round. I'd think that even with Hawthorne accepting the Waynflete Chair at Oxford, Dean Zimmerman alone would have to count for something. (I'll set aside Sider's publication in F&P.)
Purdue has a great faculty for those interested in PR, but potential applicants should be aware that for the last several years they have had about two bucks for funding new grads.
Why aren't you a fan of the PGR, Trent? As someone who is beginning to look at PhD programs and plans on applying next year, I would be interested in knowing your reasons.
I'm not sure how they assign the rankings for the sub-groups, but if the evaluators as a whole determine them rather than philosophy of religion people in particular then this makes some sense. Dean Zimmerman is known primarily as a metaphysician. Ed Wierenga is known primarily as a philosopher of religion. I'm not sure how many people not in philosophy of religion even know of Dean's four publications in philosophy of religion.
I'm not sure philosophers of religion would consider his four papers in philosophy of religion to be all that central to the field. He's got a paper on God and time that he himself thinks is downright awful, one of the worst things he's ever written (written right after he moved to Syracuse and then had his house burned down, and he had to get the paper in by Ganssle and Woodruff's deadline despite his state of mind at the time). He's got a paper defending the view that Christians ought to be dualists, which I haven't had a chance to look at. He's got his falling elevator paper, which is the only one of the four as far as I know that's gotten attention in further discussions, but it's defending a view Dean doesn't even really hold. There was also a really early paper he co-wrote with Chisholm that had to do with God and tense, but I've never seen it cited or heard it mentioned. I know about it only because I looked through the Philosophers' Index.
This isn't to slight Dean. I think he's one of the best metaphysicians of our day, and I really greatly benefited from interacting with him in Syracuse during his short time here, both as a philosopher and as a Christian. I just don't think he's done as much in philosophy of religion as you might think, and the work he's done as a metaphysician has been so influential that it just overshadows the few things he's published in philosophy of religion.
Ed Wierenga, on the other hand, has taken distinctive views in philosophy of religion that no one else has held. For example, while he's not alone in defending the A-theory as consistent with an atemporal view of God, his approach isn't like the others who do this (Stump/Kretzmann and Leftow). He's also published on a wider variety of issues and with a good deal more focus on the field. It's been at the sacrifice of publishing in other fields, which is why he isn't as well known in other things he's good at, but philosophy of religion really is his focus. That's not so for Dean.
That's a plausible explaination as to what's going on, but it still seems like a stretch in explaining Rutgers complete abscense from the list. I'd think that Rutger's overall rank and Zimmerman's general reputation would at least garner a mention.
For those interested here are the previous rankings.
Group 1
University of Notre Dame (5.0)
Group 2
Oxford University (4.25)
Group
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (3.0)
Group 4
Cornell University (2.0)
Purdue University (3.0)
University of Oklahoma, Norman (3.0)
University of Wisconsin, Madison (3.0)
Yale University (3.25)
Also Notable (median of 3.0): Georgetown University; Indiana University, Bloomington; University of Missouri, Columbia; University of Rochester.
Concerning last year's rankings keep in mind that John Hawthorne had several PR publications even though his are also "overshadowed" by his massive epistemology fame.
Kieth DeRose over at GOT also thought Rutgers should make it.
Ted Sider has a paper on Hell, too. Of the top of my head I can't think of any other PR stuff Ted has written. I'm pretty sure Earl Conee wrote the God chapter in _Riddles of Existence_.
I think the solution here is clear: Dean should write more PR!!
PS
Bradley, I'll email you privately about my strong reservations about the PGR.
I'm not 100% sure what you're arguing for, Trent, but if you're assuming John's departure made all the difference in Rutgers' ratings from two years ago (there were none last year), that's probably exactly what the raters were thinking, but I'm not sure it reflects the facts. John's contributions to the field in recent years have been about as much as Dean's. They both know the literature very well, and even though John has a much larger publication record in the field, their recent philosophy of religion outputs have been much more similar to each other.
It's probably also worth noting that John's primary work until the last few years has been metaphysics and philosophy of language, with his recent epistemological stuff added in, whereas Dean's has been largely just in metaphysics, which there are now lots of people at Rutgers doing. That means there's a larger student base who might want to work with John than there will be with Dean, meaning Dean would probably end up with more philosophy of religion students anyway out of any Rutgers would have had. With that, his presence might be more important for students interested in philosophy of religion than John's was, even if John's list of philosophy of religion publications (mostly from very early in his career) is huge.
I have a query related not to the rankings, but to the dim view Leiter takes (as expressed in "A Realistic Perspective on Graduate School") on accruing debt while in grad school. I have recently decided to apply to grad school (at the University of Texas) in order to enter academia as a professor, and also need to support a family (wife and going on two children). I understand that people do this, so I'd be interested in any moderating perspectives on it (Trent?). Either as a comment, or just emailing me, whatever. Thanks...
The general rule of thumb is not to accept an offer of admission from a department that won't give you a full ride. They often accept too many people because they know some will not show up, but sometimes enough show up that some would be left without funding. If the only places that accept you do not give you funding, I recommend taking a year off and applying again a year later with better knowledge of the process and of what sorts of departments might consider you a good fit for their program.
I'm in my tenth year at Syracuse right now. They gave me five years of guaranteed funding, and I got a sixth year because some people left at the last minute. I've had continuing education courses and courses at another institution since then, until this semester when they gave me a last-minute T.A. position. We haven't taken a loan yet, although we do have a pretty low rent situation that has really helped.
There is also the health insurance issue, if your wife doesn't have a job where you can get coverage. With funding, you should get insurance, but if you go beyond your guaranteed funding you'll have to get adjunct work, and that almost never comes with health insurance. My recommendation is to pursue Ph.D. work in states that have health insurance available for lower income families with less stringent income requirements than Medicaid does. You almost certainly won't qualify for Medicaid by federal standards for your whole family with an adjunct's salary. I think it took three kids for us to get the kids covered, and we need the special New York plan to cover me and my wife included. If we were in another state, we might be uninsured.
Thanks, Jeremy. I'm only applying to Texas, because I already live here in Austin (and am an aspiring metaphysician, so fortunately it's a good fit, too). At UT if you get a TA, AI, or fellowship, tuition is reimbursed, so I'm not worried about that; and I'd get health insurance as a TA. What concerns me is the living expenses: a stipend won't pay our bills, so I'm looking at living off loans.
The health insurance is only an issue after your funding runs out. I doubt you'll have the whole set of delays I've had, since some have to do with special issues with autism with two of our kids and my three likely advisors leaving for Rutgers right as I started teaching my own course, leaving me with little motivation to pursue any projects I might have been interested in, but having a family has certainly contributed to my going slower than others in my program, and they're mostly taking longer than the allotted time too.
Does Texas pay a ridiculously low stipend? I had a tuition waiver, health insurance, and enough pay to get by during all my time as a T.A. In fact, I've gotten less money as an adjunct than I ever had as a T.A., and it's always been enough. It's true that Syracuse has low living expenses compared to the country as a whole, but I'm surprised that a program as good as Texas can't pay enough even to live meagerly on.
The 9-month stipend for a TA is listed as "$2,154-13,390." A family of four cannot live on that above the poverty line, so I'm thinking loans will have to get us by, and some freelance editing, especially during summers. I really think God is pointing me in this direction, but it is a step of faith, and I'll have to see what He provides.
That low end is pretty low. I would say that Syracuse's low end is a little higher than Texas' high end. The high end for TAs in their final years is over $15,000 (with possible summer teaching to pull it up to something like $19,000).
One thing to find out is if they allow you to work another job when under their funding. Syracuse doesn't. It would actually be illegal for a TA to be working an additional job on the side, and you have to sign a contract agreeing not to do so. But they do allow summer work for those not on fellowship. The only problem is if the department expects you to be doing things during your summer to make progress on your degree, because a full-time summer job would interfere with that.
Hi, guys. Trent told me about this discussion, so I thought I'd throw my oar in, including a little advertisement for philosophy of religion at Rutgers.
From my point of view, it was surprising to see Rutgers ranked so highly in philosophy of religion in the previous gourmet report, and a little sad to see it fall completely off the map in the new one. I'm not sure what the explanation is. It looks to me like all the advisors are friends of mine! My take on it is that they were thinking: if you don't have two people doing it, or one person who publishes a whole lot squarely in philosophy of religion, then it shouldn't be considered a specialty of your department. And maybe that's fair.
I hope, though, that Rutgers will eventually be seen as an obvious place to go for people with a decent interest in philosophy of religion. Actually, we've had tons of such students in recent years, so there's no real worry, I guess.
It's true I haven't published all that much in the area; so I don't think of myself as having a high profile in philosophy of religion. I do hope to move more squarely into the thick of philosophy of religion, eventually. I have been giving dozens of talks each year for the last two or three years on Molinism and foreknowledge and God's being outside of time; and there are several hundred pages of manuscript material behind those talks, though only about 60 pages of the Molinism stuff is anywhere near ready for publication.
I think there's already enough activity in philosophy of religion at Rutgers to make it a good place for students with an interest in the subject. I run a reading group on topics in philosophy of religion; some semesters we meet 9 or 10 times, other semesters (like this one) only a couple of times, but there's always 9 or 10 grad students involved. And there were about 12 grad students in a philosophy of religion seminar I taught last year, and there seems to be plenty of interest in my continuing to teach philosophy of religion at the graduate level. So maybe you guys can spread the word...
Gotta go do some mock interviewing; so, end of advertisement! Cheers!
Here are the Philosophy of Religion rankings.
Group 1
Oxford University
University of Notre Dame
Group 2
Saint Louis University
Group 3
Purdue University
Group 4
Cornell University
Group 5
Baylor University
Claremont Graduate School
Fordham University
Georgetown University
Indiana University, Bloomington
University of California, Riverside
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of New England
University of Oklahoma, Norman
University of Rochester
University of St. Andrews
University of Texas, Austin
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Yale University
Looking at the rankings it's interesting that Rutgers didn't make the list this time round. I'd think that even with Hawthorne accepting the Waynflete Chair at Oxford, Dean Zimmerman alone would have to count for something. (I'll set aside Sider's publication in F&P.)
Purdue has a great faculty for those interested in PR, but potential applicants should be aware that for the last several years they have had about two bucks for funding new grads.
Now Tim I can't imagine why you'd be eager for us to see these results! :-)~
I'm no fan of the PGR, but I'm glad to see that my main man Ed Wierenga can put us on list all by his lonesome.
Why aren't you a fan of the PGR, Trent? As someone who is beginning to look at PhD programs and plans on applying next year, I would be interested in knowing your reasons.
I'm not sure how they assign the rankings for the sub-groups, but if the evaluators as a whole determine them rather than philosophy of religion people in particular then this makes some sense. Dean Zimmerman is known primarily as a metaphysician. Ed Wierenga is known primarily as a philosopher of religion. I'm not sure how many people not in philosophy of religion even know of Dean's four publications in philosophy of religion.
I'm not sure philosophers of religion would consider his four papers in philosophy of religion to be all that central to the field. He's got a paper on God and time that he himself thinks is downright awful, one of the worst things he's ever written (written right after he moved to Syracuse and then had his house burned down, and he had to get the paper in by Ganssle and Woodruff's deadline despite his state of mind at the time). He's got a paper defending the view that Christians ought to be dualists, which I haven't had a chance to look at. He's got his falling elevator paper, which is the only one of the four as far as I know that's gotten attention in further discussions, but it's defending a view Dean doesn't even really hold. There was also a really early paper he co-wrote with Chisholm that had to do with God and tense, but I've never seen it cited or heard it mentioned. I know about it only because I looked through the Philosophers' Index.
This isn't to slight Dean. I think he's one of the best metaphysicians of our day, and I really greatly benefited from interacting with him in Syracuse during his short time here, both as a philosopher and as a Christian. I just don't think he's done as much in philosophy of religion as you might think, and the work he's done as a metaphysician has been so influential that it just overshadows the few things he's published in philosophy of religion.
Ed Wierenga, on the other hand, has taken distinctive views in philosophy of religion that no one else has held. For example, while he's not alone in defending the A-theory as consistent with an atemporal view of God, his approach isn't like the others who do this (Stump/Kretzmann and Leftow). He's also published on a wider variety of issues and with a good deal more focus on the field. It's been at the sacrifice of publishing in other fields, which is why he isn't as well known in other things he's good at, but philosophy of religion really is his focus. That's not so for Dean.
You gotta check out Zimmerman and Chisholm's paper on God and tense. 3 pages! And very good.
Are there reasons to doubt PGR's overall rankings?
Jeremy,
That's a plausible explaination as to what's going on, but it still seems like a stretch in explaining Rutgers complete abscense from the list. I'd think that Rutger's overall rank and Zimmerman's general reputation would at least garner a mention.
For those interested here are the previous rankings.
Group 1
University of Notre Dame (5.0)
Group 2
Oxford University (4.25)
Group
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (3.0)
Group 4
Cornell University (2.0)
Purdue University (3.0)
University of Oklahoma, Norman (3.0)
University of Wisconsin, Madison (3.0)
Yale University (3.25)
Also Notable (median of 3.0): Georgetown University; Indiana University, Bloomington; University of Missouri, Columbia; University of Rochester.
Don't forget Zimmerman and van Inwagen's Persons Human and Divine.
Concerning last year's rankings keep in mind that John Hawthorne had several PR publications even though his are also "overshadowed" by his massive epistemology fame.
Kieth DeRose over at GOT also thought Rutgers should make it.
Ted Sider has a paper on Hell, too. Of the top of my head I can't think of any other PR stuff Ted has written. I'm pretty sure Earl Conee wrote the God chapter in _Riddles of Existence_.
I think the solution here is clear: Dean should write more PR!!
PS
Bradley, I'll email you privately about my strong reservations about the PGR.
Bradly, I can't find your email address on your blog. Send me an email and we can discuss the PGR. In the mean time see
http://dissoiblogoi.blogspot.com/2006/11/pointless-waste-of-time.html
I'm not 100% sure what you're arguing for, Trent, but if you're assuming John's departure made all the difference in Rutgers' ratings from two years ago (there were none last year), that's probably exactly what the raters were thinking, but I'm not sure it reflects the facts. John's contributions to the field in recent years have been about as much as Dean's. They both know the literature very well, and even though John has a much larger publication record in the field, their recent philosophy of religion outputs have been much more similar to each other.
It's probably also worth noting that John's primary work until the last few years has been metaphysics and philosophy of language, with his recent epistemological stuff added in, whereas Dean's has been largely just in metaphysics, which there are now lots of people at Rutgers doing. That means there's a larger student base who might want to work with John than there will be with Dean, meaning Dean would probably end up with more philosophy of religion students anyway out of any Rutgers would have had. With that, his presence might be more important for students interested in philosophy of religion than John's was, even if John's list of philosophy of religion publications (mostly from very early in his career) is huge.
Since Trent has thrown up a link to Michael Pakaluk's comments on the PGR it seems fair to point out Keith DeRose's remarks on the post.
I have a query related not to the rankings, but to the dim view Leiter takes (as expressed in "A Realistic Perspective on Graduate School") on accruing debt while in grad school. I have recently decided to apply to grad school (at the University of Texas) in order to enter academia as a professor, and also need to support a family (wife and going on two children). I understand that people do this, so I'd be interested in any moderating perspectives on it (Trent?). Either as a comment, or just emailing me, whatever. Thanks...
The general rule of thumb is not to accept an offer of admission from a department that won't give you a full ride. They often accept too many people because they know some will not show up, but sometimes enough show up that some would be left without funding. If the only places that accept you do not give you funding, I recommend taking a year off and applying again a year later with better knowledge of the process and of what sorts of departments might consider you a good fit for their program.
I'm in my tenth year at Syracuse right now. They gave me five years of guaranteed funding, and I got a sixth year because some people left at the last minute. I've had continuing education courses and courses at another institution since then, until this semester when they gave me a last-minute T.A. position. We haven't taken a loan yet, although we do have a pretty low rent situation that has really helped.
There is also the health insurance issue, if your wife doesn't have a job where you can get coverage. With funding, you should get insurance, but if you go beyond your guaranteed funding you'll have to get adjunct work, and that almost never comes with health insurance. My recommendation is to pursue Ph.D. work in states that have health insurance available for lower income families with less stringent income requirements than Medicaid does. You almost certainly won't qualify for Medicaid by federal standards for your whole family with an adjunct's salary. I think it took three kids for us to get the kids covered, and we need the special New York plan to cover me and my wife included. If we were in another state, we might be uninsured.
Thanks, Jeremy. I'm only applying to Texas, because I already live here in Austin (and am an aspiring metaphysician, so fortunately it's a good fit, too). At UT if you get a TA, AI, or fellowship, tuition is reimbursed, so I'm not worried about that; and I'd get health insurance as a TA. What concerns me is the living expenses: a stipend won't pay our bills, so I'm looking at living off loans.
The health insurance is only an issue after your funding runs out. I doubt you'll have the whole set of delays I've had, since some have to do with special issues with autism with two of our kids and my three likely advisors leaving for Rutgers right as I started teaching my own course, leaving me with little motivation to pursue any projects I might have been interested in, but having a family has certainly contributed to my going slower than others in my program, and they're mostly taking longer than the allotted time too.
Does Texas pay a ridiculously low stipend? I had a tuition waiver, health insurance, and enough pay to get by during all my time as a T.A. In fact, I've gotten less money as an adjunct than I ever had as a T.A., and it's always been enough. It's true that Syracuse has low living expenses compared to the country as a whole, but I'm surprised that a program as good as Texas can't pay enough even to live meagerly on.
The 9-month stipend for a TA is listed as "$2,154-13,390." A family of four cannot live on that above the poverty line, so I'm thinking loans will have to get us by, and some freelance editing, especially during summers. I really think God is pointing me in this direction, but it is a step of faith, and I'll have to see what He provides.
That low end is pretty low. I would say that Syracuse's low end is a little higher than Texas' high end. The high end for TAs in their final years is over $15,000 (with possible summer teaching to pull it up to something like $19,000).
One thing to find out is if they allow you to work another job when under their funding. Syracuse doesn't. It would actually be illegal for a TA to be working an additional job on the side, and you have to sign a contract agreeing not to do so. But they do allow summer work for those not on fellowship. The only problem is if the department expects you to be doing things during your summer to make progress on your degree, because a full-time summer job would interfere with that.
Hi, guys. Trent told me about this discussion, so I thought I'd throw my oar in, including a little advertisement for philosophy of religion at Rutgers.
From my point of view, it was surprising to see Rutgers ranked so highly in philosophy of religion in the previous gourmet report, and a little sad to see it fall completely off the map in the new one. I'm not sure what the explanation is. It looks to me like all the advisors are friends of mine! My take on it is that they were thinking: if you don't have two people doing it, or one person who publishes a whole lot squarely in philosophy of religion, then it shouldn't be considered a specialty of your department. And maybe that's fair.
I hope, though, that Rutgers will eventually be seen as an obvious place to go for people with a decent interest in philosophy of religion. Actually, we've had tons of such students in recent years, so there's no real worry, I guess.
It's true I haven't published all that much in the area; so I don't think of myself as having a high profile in philosophy of religion. I do hope to move more squarely into the thick of philosophy of religion, eventually. I have been giving dozens of talks each year for the last two or three years on Molinism and foreknowledge and God's being outside of time; and there are several hundred pages of manuscript material behind those talks, though only about 60 pages of the Molinism stuff is anywhere near ready for publication.
I think there's already enough activity in philosophy of religion at Rutgers to make it a good place for students with an interest in the subject. I run a reading group on topics in philosophy of religion; some semesters we meet 9 or 10 times, other semesters (like this one) only a couple of times, but there's always 9 or 10 grad students involved. And there were about 12 grad students in a philosophy of religion seminar I taught last year, and there seems to be plenty of interest in my continuing to teach philosophy of religion at the graduate level. So maybe you guys can spread the word...
Gotta go do some mock interviewing; so, end of advertisement! Cheers!
Dean