How To Analyze A Program's Placement Data?

[hazeus]

perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?

[polly_mer]

perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?

Salary is so variable by location that the information is not useful.

I would be much more interested in publication rate at time of graduation than what happens during the next step.  If everyone has N>5 articles when TT hires across the US average 5, then that's useful information regarding the value of the program.  Likewise, if graduates average 1 article and successful TT hires average 10, then that's also useful information on preparation for the job market.

Another possibly useful bit of information may be funded conference attendance during grad school and average number of presentations per graduate.  I was stunned when I learned that some programs didn't send students to at least one important conference per year nor did those programs insist on at least submission of articles during grad school.

[Hibush]

perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?

The expectations for various career trajectories don't have any consistent measures. Matching the performance to expectations would be a very difficult task. No more difficult, and far more valuable, would be to find out how satisfied the graduates are with their life and career.

If the idea is to help undergraduates chose a graduate program, that is still not precise enough. Even a program that results in extremely high satisfaction is wrong for a student who values different things from that schools of graduate alumni.

Prospective graduate students should have a candid talk with the director of graduate studies in all the programs they are considering. Some will better match their own values and have capacity for them to excel after finishing their graduate degree.

[mamselle]

This disclaimer/statement, on the University of Texas/Arlington's site, sounds like a compilation of some of the ideas often put forth here:

   https://www.uta.edu/cola/academics/index.php#graduate&gsc.tab=0

M.