“Within the United States, the most well respected ranking system for graduate degree programs is the National Research Council (NRC). In 2010, the NRC released its rankings for geography departments. The NRC used multiple factors by which to rank geography departments such as time to degree, faculty input, and publications. Based on the aggregate results of that 2010 study, the site PhDs.org has ranked the top ten geography department as: Boston University, University of California-Santa Barbara, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of California-Los Angeles, Clark University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arizona State University, Ohio State University-Main Campus, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Maryland-College Park” (source).
“A secondary source to the NRC rankings is the list compiled by Justin Holman, who holds a PhD in geography and maintains a respected blog, Geographical Perspectives. He publishes regular rankings of the top Geography and GIS programs as an addendum to the NRC rankings, explaining, ‘[u]nfortunately, because these rankings were produced by academic types who are masters of creating difficult-to-understand prose for publication in peer review journals, you almost need a PhD to interpret their rankings.’ His latest ranking for geography departments lists the top ten as: UC Santa Barbara; University of Colorado at Boulder; Penn State; Ohio State; University of Wisconsin-Madison; University of California, Los Angeles; Clark University; Boston University; University of Oregon; and University of California, Berkeley” (Ibid.).
“Justin Holman is CEO of Aftermarket Analytics, a web technology company specializing in advanced decision analytics for the Automotive Aftermarket. He also teaches Statistics in the Hasan School of Business at Colorado State University – Pueblo. Previously, he worked as Chief Operating Officer at BioMedware where he led research projects for the National Cancer Institute, Managing Consultant at MapInfo where he devised real estate strategies for The Home Depot, Darden Restaurants and other retailers, Vice President of Software Development at LogicTools, now part of IBM’s Supply Chain Application group, and Research Scientist at the US Geological Survey where he analyzed the relationship between climate and wildfire in the Western US” (source).
Editor’s note: Many thanks to Professor Kostas Goulias for bringing this material to our attention.
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