Harvard Faculty Leads in Productivity

Despite Harvard professors’ reputation for prioritizing their academic output over their teaching, a new national ranking of faculty productivity suggests that not all in Harvard’s Faculty are as prolific as otherwise presumed.

Harvard, overall, has one of the most productive faculties in the nation, with nine of its departments beating out departments at other universities, according to results from the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index released to the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. However, some high profile departments at Harvard did not even crack the list of the top 10 departments of their kind.

The Productivity Index, developed by the Academic Analytics company, bases its rankings on how many articles and books the professors in a given department publish. The rankings also take into account journal citations, grants, awards, and honors given to department professors.

Harvard’s English department did not make the top 10 in its category, with Princeton’s English department ranking first—a surprise to many, since Harvard’s English department ranks among the top three in rankings such as U.S. News & World Report, which takes into account peer assessments from professors from other universities.

English Department Chair and Professor of English Literature and Comparative Literature James T. Engell ’73 declined to comment on the rankings.

English concentrator Alexandra S. Miller ’07 was not fazed by the results. “Some of my professors have edited the Norton Anthology and are renowned,” she said. “With some of my other professors, I’m not as aware of their output, but...they’re all really intelligent and great educators.”

“The issue of scholarship and teaching are separate,” Miller added.

Other departments fared better, however, as Harvard faculty in the Sociology, Public Health, Music, Epidemiology, Economics, Classics, and Chemistry Departments were named the most productive in the nation, along with the African and African American Studies Department.

“It’s wonderful news,” said Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Thomas professor of History and chair of the African and African American Studies Department.

Higginbothom added that although she was excited about the news, she felt the ranking’s emphasis on faculty output ignored many other significant qualities of the department, such as the mentoring and teaching abilities of its professors.

Jacob K. Olupona, professor of African and African American studies and African religious traditions, said that the department’s high output rate was a result of the atmosphere of collaboration fostered amongst professors.

“I am constantly thinking about how my work relates to that of my colleagues,” said Olupona, formerly the director of the University of California-Davis Department of African and African American Studies.

Higginbothom said that these rankings were particularly meaningful to the Af-Ams Department because “when black studies were brought to campuses they were first viewed as not a serious academic field.”

Higginbotham noted that her department’s ranking showcased the support it received from Harvard. “The ability of a department to be productive says a lot about how the department is viewed within the larger university.”

—Staff writer Alexander B. Cohn can be reached at abcohn@fas.harvard.edu.