Tufts graduate programs received mixed reviews in U.S. News & World Report's most recent listing of the best graduate schools in the country. The rankings are for 2006, and they were released last month.
In the School of Arts and Sciences, the Tufts English department was ranked 61st among national English departments, the history department was ranked 74th, and the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development was ranked 89th in the psychology research category.
The Tufts-Boston School of Occupational Therapy - also in the School of Arts and Sciences - was ranked fifth in the country in the occupational therapy subcategory of the health rankings.
Rankings in the magazine are for doctoral programs, and they are based entirely on peer assessment surveys. According to the methodology on the magazine's Web site, each university was given two copies of a survey and asked to rank the academic quality of programs at other universities on a five point scale. The surveys for the 2006 rankings were conducted last fall.
Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Robin Kanarek said the small size of the Arts and Sciences graduate programs makes it difficult to compete in rankings based on peer assessment surveys.
Larger schools have more alumni working at other institutions, and therefore more people are familiar with the quality of the schools' programs. "We don't get a lot of dissemination to other institutions," Kanarek said.
According to Kanarek, the Arts and Sciences rankings have been consistent during her three and a half years in the position. She said an increased focus on graduate education by the University administration, particularly by University Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha, will shift the rankings within the next five years. "Graduate education is becoming more important to Tufts," she said.
There has been an increase in the pay for graduate students serving as teaching assistants, in addition to the creation of other programs designed to attract top graduate students, including Bharucha's Provost Fellows program, which provides more money for graduate studies to a select group of students.
"Tufts is much more competitive with our peer institutions," Kanarek said. "We can now pay our TAs what they get paid at other institutions."
Kanarek said Arts and Sciences faculty have not expressed concern about the rankings. "It's not a huge thing on their radar," she said.
The School of Engineering is ranked 79th overall among engineering schools. In the engineering subcategories, the chemical engineering department is ranked 61st, the mechanical engineering department is ranked 69th, and the civil engineering department is ranked 70th.
Because graduate school rankings are based entirely on the peer assessment surveys - as opposed to undergraduate rankings, which also take into account academic and financial statistics - graduate rankings change over a longer period of time.
"We can do little to improve them directly," Dean of the School of Engineering Linda Abriola said.
Abriola also said that the School of Engineering has only emerged as a distinct entity under University President Lawrence Bacow, and that may decrease other academics' familiarity with Tufts' programs.
"I think that the visibility of the School of Engineering within Tufts had been low," she said. "Of course, we will always be at some disadvantage in that we are smaller than most schools of engineering at Research I universities and, thus, have relatively fewer graduates." Research I universities grant at least 50 doctoral degrees anually and receive at least $40 million in federal aid.
Abriola said the School of Engineering draws most of its graduate applicants from the undergraduate school. During her tenure of the last two years, she said the school has made an effort to more effectively advertise its graduate programs to students from other undergraduate institutions in an effort to broaden the reach of the Tufts name. "We have less applicants than we might from students who have not had first-hand exposure to Tufts," she said.
The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is ranked 12th. The School of Medicine is ranked 43rd in medical research and 58th in primary care.
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs. U.S. News & World Report only ranks international politics as a subcategory of public policy and does not rank schools of international relations. "They just don't rank that category," Fletcher School Director of Communications Jack Hopkins said.
Kanarek said the magazine rankings do not dictate her job, but she said administrators do pay attention to the list. "I know that people are looking at them so we do at least have to be aware of them," she said.
-- Kelly McAnerney contributed to this article.
