Our Best Schools of Social Work: How Good Are They?

Few topics in social work are as contentious as graduate program rankings. If history is any guide, publication of the 2012 U.S. News & World Report rankings will lead to a predictable set of behaviors on the part of social work schools and departments. Top-ranked programs will trumpet their rankings far and wide while schools with low rankings grouse about the methodological inadequacies and sheer absurdity of the rankings enterprise or ignore them altogether. Schools with mediocre rankings will reframe them as stellar achievements, declaring, for example, that they are the "tenth-ranked public school of social work in the western U.S. region." Although they may disdain them, it is clear from these reactions that many social work deans, directors, and faculty members consider rankings influential. Rankings of social work graduate programs were first published by Margulies and Blau (1973) and Jarayatne (1979). Since that time, programs have been ranked with regard to the publishing prowess of their faculties (for example, Lignon, Jackson, & Thyer, 2007), student selectivity (Kirk, Kil, & Corcoran, 2009), academic reputation (for example, Green, Baskind, Fassler, & Jordan, 2006), and other purported indicants of scholarly productivity, influence, arid excellence (for example, Feldman, 2006).The most prominent of these efforts are the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which were first published in 1994 and have been published subsequently in 2000, 2004, and 2008 (data collection is underway for the 2012 rankings). In 2008, the five top-ranked programs (of more than 200 Council on Social Work Education [CSWE]-accredited graduate programs) were, in descending order, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Columbia University, and University of Washington (the latter two schools tied for fourth). GRADUATE SOCIAL WORK PROGRAM QUALITY: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONSTRUCT Prior investigations suggest that social work graduate program quality is a multidimensional construct. For example, Kirk et al.'s (2009) study of student selectivity indicated that, of 128 MSW programs examined between 1990 and 2004,Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Columbia University, and University of Washington were ranked 119th, 70th, 34th, 89th, and 15th, respectively. The percentages of MSW program applicants accepted by these schools during this interval were 86.2%, 70.1%, 59.9%, 75.4%, and 46.2%, respectively. The five top-ranked programs in the United States during this period vis-a-vis MSW student selectivity were San Francisco State University, University of California at Berkeley, Brigham Young University, Southern Connecticut State University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with admissions rates ranging from 17.4% to 34.3%. Kirk et al. (2009) found that social work doctoral program admissions selectivity between 1990 and 2004 yielded findings generally consistent with the 2008 U.S. News and World Report rankings. The University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Washington, and Columbia University Schools of Social Work were ranked first, second, third, eighth, and 19th, respectively, out of 61 social work doctoral programs. These five schools admitted 20.7%, 22.5%, 30.0%, 33.6%, and 52.1% of doctoral program applicants, respectively, between 1990 and 2004. The U.S. News & World Report's rankings have been criticized for many reasons, including the low response rate to the survey on which they are based, corollary potential for sample selection bias, and reliance on a single-item omnibus reputational measure of "academic quality." However, Green et al. (2006) reported that the 2004 U.S. News & World Report rankings were highly correlated with the number of articles published by social work program faculty over a nearly four-year period preceding the rankings (r = . …