DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies ranked 12th in the world for its master of arts programs in a survey by Foreign Policy Magazine.
The Korbel School tied with three other schools in the rankings. Other 12th place schools included Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-San Diego.
The top three programs in the master’s category were Georgetown University in first with 54 percent of the faculty vote, followed by Johns Hopkins University with 49 percent of the vote and Harvard University with 38 percent of the vote.
The ranking was published in the March/April issue of the magazine in an article called “Inside the Ivory Tower.”
It surveyed more than 1,740 international relations professors from every four-year college and university in the country to determine the top undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. programs in the world.
The Korbel master’s programs ranked in the top 15 due to many factors, including faculty distinction, richness of the curriculum, quality of students and success of graduates, said Korbel School of International Studies Dean, Professor Tom Farer.
The school has been rising in the world due to its “quality of faculty and quality of curriculum,” he said.
Korbel faculty are world- class scholars known nationally and internationally as leading people in their fields, said Farer. The curriculum is known for its “mixture of theory and skills courses, courses that bridge theory and practice.”
“We offer as good a program as any program in the world,” he said, “and our flexibility and individual attention paid to students are superior.”
In the past, the biennial survey by Foreign Policy Magazine ranked top programs in the United States. The 2008 rankings were the first to rank the schools on a world-wide scale.
Four years ago, Foreign Policy’s first survey ranked the Korbel School 10th in the United States and in the top two west of the Northeast corridor. The second survey ranked it 9th in the country, ahead of Yale, the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California.
Of the faculty surveyed 3percent chose the Korbel School as best for master’s programs.
These types of rankings based on reputation can lag behind improvement or deterioration in program quality, said Farer.
These rankings are particularly important for schools not on the East Coast, because many students look to schools in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. for degrees in international relations, said Farer.
The value of the education students receive depends on the quality of the program, not on the location, he said.
The Korbel School offers six master’s programs in international relations: Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration; International Administration; International Development; International Human Rights; International Security; and International Studies.
The survey also asked scholars about their opinions on how they would spend $1 billion of the U.S. budget, the greatest current threats to the country today, and the greatest threats to the country in ten years.
