A new worldwide ranking has Purdue University College of Agriculture at #6 in the agriculture and forestry category which has been added this year to the annual QS World University Rankings. The top institution in the category is University of California, Davis and other U.S institutions ranked ahead of Purdue are Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin and Texas A&M University.
Jay Akridge, the Glenn W. Sample Dean of Agriculture, was keeping the honor in perspective when HAT spoke with him Monday afternoon.
“We’re pleased when something takes an external link at what we’re trying to do here and puts us in very select company, but at the same time I think everyone here believes that Indiana deserves an exceptional College of Agriculture and one of the ways we’ll look at this is to see what we can do better,” he said. “So that whole notion of using this kind of information to help us see where we can be an even better college of ag is an important outcome as well.”
The QS rankings rely on four criteria including opinions of employers in the field.
“We try to focus very hard on making sure our students are prepared to move into the workplace and well prepared not only from their discipline perspective and what they learn in the classroom, but the soft skills, so the opinions of the companies hiring our students are very, very important to us.”
And obviously Purdue scored well with those contacted. The college also did well in a measurement of research paper output and the number of times there was attribution by others for Purdue research.
“It’s a fundamental mission of ours as a land grant college and they tried to focus on measures of research impact, so how frequently is research used by others around the world as we try to move agriculture and forestry forward,” Akridge said. “Having that included on this external assessment is something important to us given our focus on our research mission.”
Wageningen University in the Netherlands was also in the top 5 and other U.S. universities in the top 25 are Oregon State (8), Penn State (9), Iowa State (10), North Carolina State (14), Michigan State (16), Illinois (17), Florida (23) and Colorado State (24).