Where You Earn Your PhD Matters

Abstract

We collected data on every tenure-track (TT) faculty member in the 122 PhD-granting political science departments in the United States to identify which graduate programs place faculty members in our discipline’s research universities. The top 20% of departments produced 75% of all faculty and the bottom 50% accounted for less than 5% of all TT faculty members at a research university. Forty-nine programs did not have a single graduate placed in a TT position at a PhD-granting department in the past 10 years, and 18 programs did not have a single graduate in a TT position at a PhD-granting department at all. The overwhelming majority of TT faculty members are at a lower or equally ranked department. The results have important implications for prospective graduate students and the future of our discipline.