Updated Annual Survey Groupings of Departments

As has been the case for a number of years, much of the data in these Annual Survey reports is presented for departments divided into groups according to several characteristics, the principal one being the highest degree offered in the mathematical sciences. Doctorate-granting departments of mathematics are further subgrouped according to their ranking of "scholarly quality of program faculty" as reported in the 1995 publication Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change. ¹ These rankings update those reported in a previous study published in 1982.² Consequently, the departments which now comprise Groups I, II, and III differ from those used prior to the 1996 survey. A list of the institutions with mathematics departments in each of these groupings may be accessed below. Please keep in mind that these groupings are used for statistical reporting purposes only and do not necessarily accurately reflect current program quality at individual departments.

The subdivision of the Group I institutions into Group I Public and Group I Private was new for the 1996 Annual Survey. With the increase in the size of the Group I departments from 39 to 48, the Annual Survey Data Committee judged that a further subdivision of public and private would provide more meaningful reporting of the data for these departments.

Prior to 1999, Group V was comprised of Groups Va and Vb, with Group Va containing Applied Mathematics/Applied Science doctoral departments and Vb containing Operations Research/Management Science doctoral departments. Response rates for Vb departments were always very poor, and many of the departments were inherently quite different from the other departments included in the Annual Survey. Beginning with the 1999 Survey, the Annual Survey Data Committee decided to no longer survey Group Vb. Hence, Group V now contains only Group Va departments.

Brief descriptions of all the groupings are as follows:

Group I is composed of 48 departments with scores in the 3.00-5.00 range.

Group I Public and Group I Private are Group I departments at public institutions and private institutions, respectively.

Group II is composed of 56 departments with scores in the 2.00-2.99 range.

Group III contains the remaining U.S. departments reporting a doctoral program, including a number of departments not included in the 1995 ranking of program faculty.

Group IV contains U.S. departments (or programs) of statistics, biostatistics, and biometrics reporting a doctoral program.

Group Va contains U.S. departments (or programs) in applied mathematics/applied science which report a doctoral program. Group Vb, which is no longer surveyed as of 1998-99, previously contained operations research and management science.

Group M contains U.S. departments granting a master's degree as the highest graduate degree.

Group B contains U.S. departments granting at most a baccalaureate degree.

¹ Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change, edited by Marvin L. Goldberger, Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela Ebert Flattau; National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1995

2 These findings were published in An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States : Mathematical and Physical Sciences, edited by Lyle V. Jones, Gardner Lindzey, and Porter E. Coggeshall; National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1982. The information on mathematics, statistics, and computer science was presented in digest form in the April 1983 issue of the Notices, pages 257-267, and an analysis of the classifications was given in the June 1983 Notices, pages 392-393.