Graduate Program Rankings for Spanish / Hispanic Literature & Linguistics
Why ranking Spanish graduate programs is problematic
The National Research Council (NRC) and US News & World Report have both attempted to rank graduate programs in the United States, yet these rankings are discredited over and over by experts in higher education and by statisticians. The voices of these experts are rarely heard because, as it turns out, people like lists and simple answers. Believing in these rankings, however, is a huge mistake for future graduate students in any discipline. It’s seductive but mistaken to assume that university rankings are put together by specially qualified, sophisticated thinkers who have found the magic formula for simplifying the enormous complexity of comparing all graduate program for all people. It’s crucial to approach “rankings” as dumbed-down simplifications without a meaningful hierarchy. This is especially so for future graduates in Hispanic literature and linguistics because the subdisciplines are so specialized and they are not rigorously investigated for the purposes of ranking. University rankings sell magazines and get enormous attention, but they have virtually nothing to do with the factors that determine graduate student success and well-being, as described below. Four rankings to avoid:
(1) The National Research Council
Conclusion: Irrelevant, especially for Hispanic linguistics
The National Research Council (NRC) attempted to rank university programs based on data collected in 2006, with minor revisions over the following three (3) years as complaints surfaced. Essentially, the NRC rankings are a historical look at the configuration of departments in 2006, and they are completely irrelevant to what you’ll find in 2018. As professors appear and disappear, and funding appears and disappears, departments can change dramatically. If one productive professor leaves, the quality of the program they leave behind is very likely to decline, along with its value to you as a graduate student. The presence or absence of specific professors also changes student-level variables used by the NRC to rank programs, like time to degree and whether graduates were placed in academic jobs after graduating. Keep in mind that great professors are more than productive scholars, they are also excellent mentors who guide their graduate students through the completion of degrees more quickly, and they help their graduates find good jobs after they graduate.
Between 2006, when the NRC collected their data, and 2018, Spanish departments have changed, from who is there to the roles they play. Also, if you are interested in Hispanic Linguistics, note that the NRC lumps literature and linguistics together, meaning the rankings would not have been relevant to you even in 2009-2010 when the NRC rankings were released. In many cases, Spanish departments have a lot of literature professors and a handful, or perhaps one or two linguistics professors, if any at all. Some highly visible universities have failed to implement Spanish linguistics graduate programs, even while the demand for Spanish linguistics scholars is overtaking the demand for Spanish literature scholars. Change is slow, especially in academia. Several websites display the old, now irrelevant NRC data, but, again, the rankings that are generated are irrelevant to a student looking for the best graduate program in 2018. It’s a historical snapshot. If you like history and you’re curious how the NRC went about ranking universities using data from 2006, you can check it out here: The National Research Council.
(2) US News & World Report
Conclusion: Marketing ploy
The yearly US News & World Report’s ranking of best colleges and graduate schools is perhaps the best-known attempt at ranking higher education programs. Colleges and universities care about these rankings because they think students and donors will care. Yet the methodology for the social sciences and humanities has an enormous flaw:
“Rankings of doctoral programs in the social sciences and humanities are based solely on the results of peer assessment surveys sent to academics in each discipline.”
– US News & World Report, Grad Schools, Methodology
What does this mean? It means that the rankings authoritatively displayed by the US News & World Report on their website and in their magazines are simply popularity contests with no attention paid to the majority of metrics that matter to graduate students, like time to degree, research and publishing productivity of faculty, graduate student funding, mentoring, networking opportunities and support, or how successful previous graduates have been in landing a good job. The metrics ignored by US News & World Report are actually the most important. It’s like ranking your favorite singers, then giving that ranking to a stranger expecting that they will agree. Unfortunately, many students seeking the best graduate school don’t even know that they should be questioning the US News & World Report’s rankings of social sciences and humanities programs.
US News & World Report rankings do not include Hispanic Linguistics, nor Spanish language and literature. Discussing their ranking methodology here is meant to underscore the need to do your own research.
The methodology they used to rank university programs is irretrievably flawed, their data is often manipulated, and they negatively affect education policy. Even highly recognizable universities like Yale and Harvard Law Schools have boycotted them because rankings push universities to focus on narrow measures like test scores or job placement at big firms instead of things that actually matter, like preparing students for public service careers or creating diverse learning environments. Some ranking systems tried to fix these problems by adjusting their metrics, but the fundamental issue remains: rankings try to measure the unmeasurable. Rankings are particularly problematic for graduate programs in Spanish because departments are often small, and just one professor leaving or arriving can impact the quality and focus of the program.
The Internet is loaded with articles against the fiction of university rankings. One example is the 2016 Op-Ed, “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” from the New York Times. Another is the 2021 article “The Absurdity of University Rankings” by the LSE Impact Blog, as well as the 2023 article “Rejecting the Rankings: Why Harvard and Yale Led a Widespread Boycott of U.S. News After Decades-Long Criticism” by the The Harvard Crimson.
(4) Search Engine Results as a Kind of Ranking
Conclusion: It is not a ranking
The order in which university programs appear in search engine results is NOT a kind of ranking relevant to finding a graduate program in any discipline. The search engine results can be manipulated by smart computer science engineers and others who work at the university that appears high in the rankings, or just their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant. Some universities do have savvy SEO experts. Execute a search and voilà, you find these universities ranking unusually high in Google for search phrases like “Spanish linguistics program” and “Spanish literature graduate program”. Clearly, Google and others do not want their search results to be unfairly biased in favor of any particular entity, and they are in a constant battle against those who attempt to gain visibility by figuring out how to manipulate web page code, content, and linking schemes to send the “right signals” to search bots in order to artificially gain more visibility. Given that search engine algorithms are (unfortunately) manipulable by savvy folks who are behind the website ranking highly, the search results cannot be relied upon as a type of university program ranking. Use the unbiased, unranked list of universities available on this site:
(5) AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude
Conclusion: Useful to help you narrow your choices if you feed it correct, updated information
Use AI for what it is. Large language models like ChatGPT or Claude cannot solve the fundamental problems inherent in ranking university departments. In fact, you could argue that they have processed flawed data and metrics that human-made ranking systems use. That’s not to say AI is useless for your graduate school search. If you feed an AI tool specific, concrete data about programs you’re considering – things like current faculty research interests, funding packages, teaching loads, cost of living indexes, and placement records – it can help you organize and analyze this information quickly. For example, you might ask “Create a comparison table of these three programs showing their TA salary versus local rent prices” or “List all professors working in sociolinguistics across these departments.” AI excels at these kinds of structured comparisons and data organization tasks.
The key is using AI as a research assistant, not as a decision-maker. Let it help you gather and organize information, but rely on your own judgment informed by conversations with current students and faculty, campus visits when possible, and careful consideration of your academic and personal goals to make the final choice about where you’ll study.
Personally Ranking Master’s and PhD Programs in Spanish
It’s wise to create your own ranking of departments based on personal preferences. Would you live in New York City? Is Florida just right? Weigh considerations that will help you succeed. Three factors that determine your success are:
- Your interest in the research emphasis of the department
- Who the professors are (publishing record, success in mentoring graduate students and seeing them through the employment stage, etc.)
- How well you will survive financially
The NRC, the US News & World Report, and search engine and ChatGPT results will not help you figure these things out. Here’s how to get started:
Use the unranked list of universities available here:
- Graduate Programs in Spanish Linguistics
- Graduate Programs in Spanish Literatures and Cultures
- Graduate Programs in Spanish Translation and Interpreting
- Online Spanish Graduate Programs
- Choose an area of research you most likely vibe with.
- Visit each department’s website, and carefully go through the professors’ profiles to see if you’re interested in their work.
- Go through the graduate student profiles to see if your interests align with theirs.
- Find information on financial support for your specific case, and how expensive it is to live in the surrounding area. Do you want to live there?
- Contact people in the department to get your remaining questions answered. One important contact is the department’s graduate secretary. They know the ins and outs of the department, and it’s their job to orient you and put you in contact with those who can answer your questions if they can’t answer your questions personally.