As is often the case, there's good news and bad news in a close look at the nationwide survey of graduate programs conducted by the National Research Council.
The good news was that UNC remained an unusually strong institution when its graduate programs were measured against all others in the nation.
Eighty-two percent of the University's programs rated in the nationwide survey were judged to be distinguished or strong. By comparison, only 43 percent of all rated departments in all fields across the country achieved the same rankings.
The bad news: Carolina has slipped.
The survey showed that UNC's reputation had dropped since the NRC's previous study in 1982. Among the 22 departments rated by the NRC a decade ago, only eight improved their standings, one remained the same, and the rest declined, some of them sharply.
"This is important because it reflects the views of our peers," said Tom Meyer, vice chancellor for graduate studies and research.
"The real concern is that this was a university on the rise in the early '80s and we have failed to maintain that rise. When you look at the numbers, overall we have plateaued."
The study
The NRC surveyed more than 8,000 graduate faculty members at 274 universities, asking them a series of questions designed to rate graduate programs in two general areas: scholarly reputation of faculty and program effectiveness.
Across the country, 3,634 programs in 41 fields of study were evaluated. At Carolina, 34 programs were assessed.
The numbers contained in the NRC's 740-page report tell many stories.
Compared to all programs across the country, Carolina's programs as a whole were strong, said a report on the NRC data prepared by Craig Calhoun, interim dean of the Graduate School.
"Faculty at UNC can take special pride in the fact that fully half of all departments at UNC were rated as extremely effective in educating research scholars/scientists," Calhoun's report said. "Across all fields and all institutions, only 21 percent of rated departments were so designated.
"This emphasis on teaching is consistent with the 1995 [UNC-CH] Institutional Self-Study Report, which found that in cases where faculty experience a conflict between the demands of teaching and research, the vast majority resolve the conflict in favor of teaching," the report said.
However, Meyer and Calhoun said the NRC report showed areas where Carolina needed to focus attention.
"UNC slid compared to a decade earlier in about twice as many programs as we gained in," Calhoun said in an interview. "Many of the slides were fairly pronounced while the gains were relatively small, so overall this brought us news of problems."
Calhoun said there were several reasons for the relative changes.
For many programs, the actual evaluations remained about the same as in the NRC's 1983 survey, Calhoun said. But those programs dropped in the latest rankings because evaluations of competing programs rose significantly, he said.
In other cases, the actual evaluations of UNC programs declined, he said.
Carolina's sharpest relative declines were in the humanities. Art history, which had been ranked on a percentile basis at 68th in the 1983 survey, fell 51 places to 17th. French fell 43 places to the 26th percentile, and Spanish fell 28 places to the 44th percentile.
Calhoun said budget cuts during the last decade hurt Carolina, especially in keeping and attracting the best faculty.
"We are routinely being turned down by people who would bring distinction to our programs because they are offered 20 percent more elsewhere," Calhoun said.
Crunching the numbers
Conclusions from the Graduate School's report also touched on these topics:
Research grants--UNC faculty members in most departments were procuring fewer federal research grants relative to their peers at top-rated departments, Calhoun's report said.
"We've done a really good job in Health Affairs and some of the sciences departments, but in others we have not," Meyer said. "It probably has not been enough of an emphasis in other units."
The University has committed resources to help faculty win more grant and contract funding, including establishment of the Proposal Development Initiative which helps faculty prepare grant proposals and establishment of the Office of Technology Development which, among other things, helps faculty negotiate ventures with corporations.
But, Meyer said, improvement in landing contracts and grants largely will depend upon changing the internal culture of some individual departments. Citations--Many UNC departments fell well shy of the mean in average number of times their faculty's research was cited by other researchers when compared with faculty within highly ranked departments, Calhoun's report said.
Meyer and Calhoun said it was difficult to generalize across departments about why this was the case.
Calhoun said the University needed to provide more encouragement and opportunities for faculty--and graduate students--to do research and have their results published.
"Giving our graduate students the opportunity to publish is important," Calhoun said. "Those departments that do not help their graduate students to publish are hurting."
Departments also need to work harder with other units to develop collaborative efforts that can lead to innovative research, Calhoun said.
Research assistantships--UNC graduate students in the humanities were much more likely to serve as teaching assistants than research assistants compared to their peers at highly ranked departments, Calhoun's report said.
The University is stepping up efforts to find more funding for graduate students, including funding for more research assistantships, he said.
"We're in the process of designing a major funding campaign for that purpose," he said.
The campaign largely will be based in the units, with assistance from the Development Office.
Much of the money raised in the campaign will be targeted toward research assistantships, he said.
Putting the pieces together
Carolina can learn some lessons from its neighboring research universities as it works to improve its programs, Calhoun said.
N.C. State, for example, does a good job of screening teaching assistants, he said. Each N.C. State candidate for a teaching assistantship goes through an interview process before entering the classroom, he said.
Carolina has a program in which teaching assistants receive training in classroom instruction, but the program reaches only 84 percent of TAs, he said.
"We need to make sure that is true of the last 16 percent as well," Calhoun said.
Duke has done a good job of targeting resources to chosen departments, he said.
"Even Duke, as well off as it is, cannot spread money all over," Calhoun said. "They make strategic investment decisions, targeting departments and developing plans that lead to excellence."
Improving Carolina's standings in the next NRC report will take hard work in many places, Meyer said.
"You have to do all things right and pay attention to detail," he said.
"To be a great university you must do graduate education well. This is just one thing we do, but it's a very important thing."
He was confident UNC would show improvement during the next decade.
"When we come back in 10 years we will discover our star is back on the rise again," he said.
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