Evaluating Academic Programs: With Applications to U.S. Graduate Decision Science Programs

This paper describes a decision analysis methodology to evaluate academic programs. It avoids the shortcomings of the well-known evaluations of universities and academic programs produced by the public media. In addition to evaluating traditional departments and schools, the methodology is designed to evaluate interdisciplinary programs or fields that typically span many areas of a university, such as operations research, risk analysis, and decision science. We first discuss general principles of using this methodology for the evaluation of disciplinary or interdisciplinary academic programs. Next, we apply this methodology to interdisciplinary graduate decision science programs in United States universities, focusing on both prescriptive decision analysis and descriptive decision research. Finally, we suggest how the methodology might be implemented to evaluate operations research programs.