Assessing the Quality of Doctoral Programs in Criminology in the United States*

* Preliminary findings from this study were presented at the Summit meetings of the Association of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program Directors, May, 2006, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. The authors would like to thank Emily Wright, Jodi Sleyo, Tamara Madensen, and the reviewers (especially Reviewer 2) for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Abstract

This study assessed the quality of doctoral programs in criminology in the United States by examining publication records of program graduates in select criminology journals. Descriptive information and other measures of quality are also considered alongside the primary findings in an effort to move towards a more comprehensive evaluation of doctoral programs in criminology. Findings revealed that graduates trained at the University of Maryland, State University of New York at Albany, Florida State University, and the University of Cincinnati were the most productive scholars over the period examined here. Discipline‐level trends and findings are also discussed.

* Preliminary findings from this study were presented at the Summit meetings of the Association of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program Directors, May, 2006, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. The authors would like to thank Emily Wright, Jodi Sleyo, Tamara Madensen, and the reviewers (especially Reviewer 2) for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

* Preliminary findings from this study were presented at the Summit meetings of the Association of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program Directors, May, 2006, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. The authors would like to thank Emily Wright, Jodi Sleyo, Tamara Madensen, and the reviewers (especially Reviewer 2) for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

1. The term criminology, as used throughout, is used to describe criminology programs as well as those programs that offer related degrees that are not technically criminology (e.g., criminal justice; crime, law and society).

2. From the department websites it was not clear whether the schools operate on a semester or quarter system. As such, that information is not reported here.

3. Pennsylvania State University’s Crime, Law, and Justice program was established in 1996. Prior to 1996, Pennsylvania State University offered a doctoral degree in Administration of Justice, which was established in 1988. Complete data were available only for the graduates of the Crime, Law, and Justice program, thus only those graduates are included here. The Crime, Law, and Justice program is contained within the Department of Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice at Pennsylvania State University. The entire department has 21 full‐time faculty, however, only 11 of those are considered faculty in the Crime, Law, and Justice program. Since only the graduates of the Crime, Law, and Justice program were included here, only the faculty designated at Crime, Law, and Justice were counted for measures created for this study. Washington State University’s Criminal Justice program was established in 2004. Prior to 2004, Washington State University offered a doctoral degree in Political Science with an emphasis in Administration, Justice, and Policy, which was established in 1982. Complete data were available for all the graduates of the Political Science with an emphasis in Administration, Justice, and Policy program. The University of California at Irvine’s Criminology, Law, and Society program was established in 1992. Prior to 1992, the University of California at Irvine offered a doctoral degree in Social Ecology with an emphasis in Criminology, Law, and Society, which was established in 1975. Complete data were available for all the graduates of the Social Ecology program with an emphasis in Criminology, Law, and Society program. Since prior studies have included these schools (e.g., Cohn et al. 2000; Fabianic 2002), the complete data from both Washington State University and the University of California at Irvine were included here.

4. Although department websites were examined earlier in the study, the numbers reported in the tables were downloaded on November 25, 2005.

5. We realize that removing 40% of the students at one time does not account for students dropping out at different times in their academic career. However, we had no reason to believe this would vary by program. Thus, we do no believe our standardized measure, which was distributed evenly among the programs, unfairly disadvantaged any particular program.

6. Not all members of ASC or ACJS allow their name to be provided for public use. For example, in 2005 about 6% of the individual ACJS memberships were faculty who did not allow their name to be public record. Since we had no reason to expect the excluded names were not distributed randomly, we felt comfortable including the measure here.

7. Although most of the schools had updated information for most of their graduates, it is possible that some graduates were not given credit for their publications because they changed their name.