APA 2014 Guide to Graduate Programs
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has released its 2014 Guide to Graduate Programs in Philosophy. The guide provides information on faculty, program strengths, placement, financial aid, and demographics. The APA notes: “All data in the guide are self-reported by representatives of the institutions, and data are included only for institutions that completed the Grad Guide survey in 2013 or 2014.”
This is a great resource, and I’m glad that the APA is doing this. That said, it’s fallible, between departments entering in (often quite detailed) information and the APA then using that information to produce the guide. I noticed an error in GSU’s information regarding the number of graduate students in our program, and I think that people involved in graduate programs should look over the guide right now to double-check their information. I just e-mailed Mike Morris with our corrected information, and he said that the APA will be releasing an updated version by the end of next week.
Hmm. Just looking over the guide more broadly, it appears that something has gone systematically wrong with the information regarding the number of graduate students in programs. Almost all programs have very few or no graduate students, and apparently there are no White graduate philosophy graduate students in the U.S. or Canada.
Thanks for pointing out that problem to us, Tim. A corrected version of the guide has just been uploaded.
It is striking that a substantial number of departments apparently have failed to provide basic information about Ph.D. student demographics and placement or have not provided updated information through 2014. It seems to me that departments ought to provide this data regularly (i.e. yearly) for the benefit of prospective students or as a public control on certain dimensions of department performance. Moreover, given the size of a typical philosophy department, it does not appear particularly onerous to assemble the relevant information. The main explanations that come to mind for the omissions–laziness, embarrassment, or a simple lack of interest–do not seem to justify the failure to make this important information available to the philosophy community.