FACULTY HIRING PATTERNS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AT ELITE UNIVERSITIES

摘要

Does it matter where you do your doctorate if your goal is to become a faculty member at a top mechanical engineering 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 U.S. News and World Report rankings, the top 10 ranked programs in Mechanical Engineering are MIT, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, CalTech, Michigan-Ann Arbor, Georgia Tech, Illinois-Urbana Champagne, Cornell, Purdue and Princeton. However, as a graduating mechanical engineering doctoral student, what are your chances of receiving an offer at one of these top-ranked institutions in Mechanical Engineering. This study looks at the distribution of faculty at these institutions and where they received their doctorate. More than 60% of the faculty at the 10 top-ranked institutions has received their doctorate from these institutions themselves with nearly 45% of them from the top four. If you include other Ivy League schools and major international universities such as the University of Cambridge this number increases to nearly 80%. More than 50% of MIT faculty has received their doctorate from MIT itself. Georgia Tech is the most diverse and had the highest percent of faculty from non top 10 ranked institutions. MIT, Caltech and Stanford are the only institutions to have successfully placed their graduates at each of the top 10 ranked institutions, while UC-Berkeley takes the top honors in placing the highest number of its graduates at other top ranked institutions. So it appears that the institution where graduates receive their doctorate affects their employability as a faculty member at the top 10 ranked mechanical engineering programs.