The NRC Taxonomy of Fields and Subfields
69 U-M Ph.D. programs were assigned to 62 NRC Primary Fields.
Doctoral programs in the School of Information and in Bioinformatics, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, Urban and Regional Planning, and Women Studies are considered Emerging Fields by the NRC and will not be rated.
Assignment of each U-M Ph.D. Program to an NRC Primary Field
The NRC has required that each Ph.D. program must be listed in only one NRC Field as its Primary Field, with the selection of other (secondary) fields as an option. We have consulted with the directors of the Ph.D. Programs to make this assignment of U-M Ph.D. Programs to Primary and Secondary Fields.
Note
Programs will be rated only in their primary fields.
Questions & Answers: NRC Taxonomy of Fields and U-M Program Field Assignments
Introduction
The NRC Taxonomy applies one uniform standard across all of the 200 research universities participating in this study. Each university has decided where to place its own Ph.D. programs within the taxonomy.
- Why are some of the U-M Ph.D. programs not listed on the Taxonomy document?
- The NRC has explicitly omitted a number of disciplines from this study. This includes, for example, Business, Dentistry, Education, and Social Work programs.
In addition, the NRC will not evaluate any program that has graduated fewer than 5 Ph.D. students in the past 5 years. At Rackham we have reviewed graduation records for our programs from FY-02 through FY-06 (ending 6/30/06) to determine eligibility.
Finally, some of our U-M programs simply do not fit into any of the fields that the NRC is evaluating. - What are the implications of Field placements for our programs in the NRC taxonomy?
- The Field in which your program is listed determines which programs in other universities will be your peer comparisons in the ratings that emerge from the NRC study.
- What are the implications for the selection of “Other Fields” by some programs? In other words, how will this information be used in the rating and ranking process?
- Programs will not be rated by the NRC in “Other Fields.” In the NRC’s listing, the name of the program at U-M will appear, in each secondary field list, with an asterisk linking to the primary field for rating information.
- Why are some Subfields listed in more than one Field of the taxonomy?
- The NRC states that the first purpose of the designated subfields is “to assist institutions in placing their programs in the Fields in the taxonomy.” For example, the NRC realizes that in some institutions Medicinal Chemistry is a component program in the Life Sciences and in others, it is affiliated with the Chemistry programs in the Physical Sciences.