Two MSU graduate schools and 15 graduate programs in education, medicine, business, law and science are considered among the best in the nation, according to an annual survey from U.S. News & World Report.
The rankings — which were released online Friday in the magazine's survey of America's Best Graduate Schools — recognized the Eli Broad College of Business and the College of Education as among the top 25 in their fields.
The business college moved up from No. 32 to No. 23 in the business schools category, and its supply chain and logistics program ranked second.
"It shows the general plan we have in place is successful," said John Delaney, associate dean for MBA programs in the business college. "We teach students to look at the three areas of procurement, logistics and operations in a unified way, and that's different than most schools.
"It's a recognition that this is the way to teach supply chain."
The magazine issues the rankings each spring, and they are based on statistical data and opinions of experts, deans, program directors and faculty in specific fields. This year's rankings were based on surveys of more than 1,200 programs conducted in fall 2005.
For the 12th year in a row, the College of Education's graduate programs in elementary and secondary education ranked No. 1. Overall, the college maintained its 14th-place ranking.
"It's always challenging to make movements in those rankings, but we are happy to stay where we are," said Cassandra Book, associate dean for external relations and student affairs for the College of Education. "We're very competitive with those other very strong colleges across the nation."
The Colleges of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine also had increases in the rankings for their primary care programs — with the osteopathic medicine program moving from ninth to fourth and the human medicine program jumping from No. 30 to No. 14.
William Strampel, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, said the college's increase in the rankings is partly because many of the graduate students and alumni of the college stay in the state.
"That's a major resource to health care in Michigan," Strampel said. "A lot of the ranking is subject to evaluation to other institutions of how they think you're doing in primary care."
The main reason that programs and colleges see a change in the rankings is that their scores change relative to other institutions, said Robert Morse, director of data research for the report.
If other schools do the same or worse in the survey, it improves the rankings of other institutions in that category, he said.
In the sciences, MSU's nuclear physics program ranked second, while the general physics program ranked No. 29. Chemistry programs ranked 42nd, and biological sciences ranked 51st.
The MSU College of Law ranked 17th for its intellectual property law program, but overall fell from a third-tier school to a fourth-tier school.
The tiers are evaluations of law schools not included in the top 100 and are accredited by the American Bar Association. The report qualifies third- and fourth-tier schools as similar in quality.
The college's overall drop is due to lower grade-point averages and law school entrance exam scores in recent years, said MSU College of Law Dean Terence Blackburn, adding that the numbers have improved.
Kristen Daum can be reached at daumkris@msu.edu.
