The institutional context of departmental prestige in American higher education

Departmental ratings for research doctorate programs in the United States are frequently placed within a theoretical framework! that represents an egalitarian science enterprise based on the meritorious performance of their faculty and students. From this viewpoint, there is no need to examine the institutional context of academic departments because distinction is viewed as a matter of merit rather than affiliation. Juxtaposed to this perspective, the present inquiry, based on data from three comparable national studies of research doctorate programs, presents evidence that the ratings reflect a contextual property representative of the university and not various performance-based departmental attributes. In effect, academic departments within universities are found to be quite similar to one another with respect to external raters' perceptions of their "quality." The importance of this finding rests not with the relative ranking of departments or universities to one another but in the discovery that departmental status operates primarily within a stable institutional context. Administrative policy implications of these findings, which are relevant to both faculty leaders and institutional decision makers, are discussed in light of current perspectives on the use of departmental ratings.