

Analysis of Over 2,000 Computer Science Professors at Top Universities - WestCoastJustin
http://jeffhuang.com/computer_science_professors.html

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sytelus
It strikes me that you can use faculty publications and PageRank algorithm to
assign a score to each faculty member. Then you can actually find out which
university has the strongest CS department. You can extend this to may be
other fields to rank universities for each major and replace things like
Patersons guide and other university ranking systems which are rather
arbitrary.

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fdr
I think you may be interested in the "h-index" and related metrics.

[http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/h-number.html](http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/h-number.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index)

[http://researchguides.uic.edu/hindex](http://researchguides.uic.edu/hindex)

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sytelus
The h-index seems like much weaker metric than PageRank. For instance,
consider 10 professors you decides to game this. They will create 100 fake
papers and cite each other in all. Now suddenly they would have h-index of
100!

PageRank is recursive metric in graph. In above case, if above 10 professors
don't have any other links pointing to them, they don't get ranked higher.
PageRank was designed to eliminate scenarios like above.

It's amusing that Google Scholar doesn't use PageRank prominently instead of
these weaker metrics.

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avar
Aren't there areas of scientific research where people doing genuinely
valuable research don't get cited at all except within a closed community? I'd
imagine e.g. that a handful of researchers all studying some obscure animal
species would have a high h-index but a very low PageRank.

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simplekoala
It is remarkable that top 4 IITs combined make up 5.2% of undergrad degrees of
CS professors right after MIT 5.9% and ahead of Harvard at 3.1%. What is even
more impressive is the fact that these four IITs admit around 140-150 students
into the Computer Science program every year. It will be interesting to know
how many undergrads graduate with CS/EE degrees from MIT and Harvard. Nehru's
vision (India's first prime minister) for creating IITs was producing best
technical minds for the development of new independent India, what happened
instead was IITs attracted the best and brightest in India and became the
number one exporter of top technical minds to USA. This brain-drain seemed to
have slowed down a bit in the last decade.

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mathattack
I suspect that many non-CS folks go onto CS Phd programs. I have heard that
undergrad major at top Indian schools reflecting signaling (certain majors in
certain years get the better students, independent of student interest) which
is why major isn't a reliable indicator. (Not so much in the US too)

Having worked with many folks from IIT, it is a fantastic source of raw
intelligence. I view it more similar to CalTech. Coming from a rich family,
being a star athlete, or student body leader doesn't help. It's all about the
academics.

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simplekoala
I suspect the opposite is true. Mostly IIT CS/EE majors get into the top CS
PhD programs. Many non-CS folks, sure change professions to being programmers
but rarely graduate with a stellar PhD from a top 5 (10?) computer science
program. Most of these IIT grads have to apply to graduate school with 6
semesters of work. Without a CS/EE degree, and a recommendation of a top IIT
CS prof (who has a good reputation of sending top students regularly to
graduate programs) whose students get pattern matched by the selection
committee's from top 10 CS schools, it is next to impossible for a non-CS IIT
grad to compete with a typical top 10 graduating CS grad (9.4 + GPA, probably
some Math/Phy/Chem olympiad medal or ICPC finalist/winner, almost perfect GRE
scores, may 1/2 ACM conference papers). Please note that I emphasize the top
10 CS schools part quite a bit because the game of finding an asst prof job is
heavily rigged and top 10 CS school grads have a major advantage over others
here.

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mathattack
Thank you for clarifying. In hindsight I think you're right. There is a higher
burden on the foreign student. An MIT EE or applied math undergrad with a lot
of CS classes can get into MIT's Phd program without the CS degree, while it's
tougher from someone unknown to the faculty.

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cabinpark
Analysis of Over 2,000 Computer Science Professors at Top _US_ Universities

I was expecting universities from all around the world but this is just the
US.

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smoyer
This is an interesting analysis and I can think of two opposing scenarios that
might both be important (note that this is purely speculation based on
observing people in industry):

1) Having more full professors might indicate a strength in the core math and
theories behind CS. This field is much slower moving than the "technology du
jour", so continuity and continued thought is important.

2) Associate and assistant professors (in theory younger and more attuned to
the latest technology fads) might be what ties the almost real-time advances
to the backing theories.

If my hypothesis holds true (and I have no data that proves it does), then
balanced CS departments would be most effective. Many times having a broader
demographic is advantageous, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

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brudgers
The number of full professors appears to have some correlation to the
reputation of a CS department, but for state universities political climate
also probably plays a role - few if any departments at Florida have a high
ratio of tenured professors. This is true throughout the system and probably
reflects policy more than anything else - not the Florida is necessarily a top
CS destination.

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curiousDog
Over a 100 professors just from the IITs. Incredible.

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ycaspirant
Yeah, I was thinking that if you added up all the IIT placements, they would
be second only to MIT, but perhaps it's not fair to add them up like that,
because each one is a separate institution.

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statguy
and the table doesn't include Kharagpur (and Roorkee, Guwahati) because their
percentages are smaller. It is conceivable that if they were all added up,
they might even surpass MIT. But as you said, its not fair.

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Al-Khwarizmi
The upward trends in the hiring graph do not show that "there is growth in
computer science". If I am hired by a university in 2002, another in 2007 and
another in 2012, I will only show up in the graph for 2012 because they are
getting hiring dates from current professor data. So that graph does not say
much about growth.

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srcreigh
Sad to see the University of Waterloo (Canada) not on the list. It would be
nice to see its comparison to US schools.

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vladtaltos
and here I thought they're going to rank them according to the length and
bushiness of their beards...

