PhD Program Prestige and Faculty Location in Criminal Justice and Sociology Programs

Abstract

Criminal justice education is striving to become completely integrated into the academic community and in the process has assumed many of the characteristics of the more established disciplines. Prestigious academic programs hiring PhDs from other prestigious programs has been a familiar pattern for many established academic programs. The initiative to maximize program prestige by hiring PhDs from high-ranking programs is thought to benefit both program and individuals. This study examined the sources of PhD degrees among prestigious and less prestigious programs in criminal justice and compared the results to those found for sociology. Taking into account the multidisciplinary nature of criminal justice and its faculties, among ranked criminal justice programs, a tendency for highly ranked programs to hire PhDs from other highly ranked programs was observed although not as strongly as that found in sociology. Some questions for criminal justice education raised by this pattern were identified.