Faculty at top EE/CS research universities

Abstract

Does it matter where you do your doctorate if your goal is to become a faculty member at a top electrical engineering / computer science research university? A number of criteria have been used to rank engineering institutions including total research and development expenditures, federally sponsored research and development, number of members of the National Academies, significant faculty awards, size of endowment and annual giving, and mean GRE scores of enrolling graduates students, among others. As per the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, the top 10 ranked universities are MIT, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Georgia Tech, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, Michigan-Ann Arbor, Cornell, Princeton and Purdue. However, as a graduating EE/CS doctoral student, what are your chances of receiving an offer at one of these top-ranked institutions. This study looks at the distribution of faculty at these institutions and where they received their doctorate. More than 67% of the faculty members at the 10 top-ranked institutions have received their doctorate from these institutions themselves with nearly 38% of them from the top three. If you include other Ivy League universities and major international universities, this number increases to nearly 80%. Among the top three institutes MIT, Stanford and UC-Berkeley, nearly twothirds of the faculty have received their doctorate from one of these three institutions themselves, 80% of them from the top 10 ranked institutions, and more than 90% from top 10, other Ivy League universities and major international universities. More than 40% of MIT faculty has received their doctorate from MIT itself. These numbers are significantly higher as compared to some other fields. Some of the factors which contribute to this are the local employment market for the graduates and their availability and interest at a future date, and tracking and mentoring of future faculty members by these institutions. MIT, Stanford and UC-Berkley are just about equally successful in placing the highest number of its graduates at other top ranked institutions. Besides the top three, CalTech, CMU and Princeton are the only institutions to have successfully placed their graduates at each of the top 10 ranked institutions. Public universities are in general more diverse and have a higher percentage of faculty members from non top 10 ranked institutions. Even though at other institutions, the diversity from which faculty have received their doctorates increases, it appears that the institution where graduates receive their doctorate affects their employability as a faculty member at top ranked electrical engineering / computer science programs. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.