December 7, 2007

'Nuttiness' in a Study of Faculty Productivity

To the Editor:

I read "Faculty-Productivity Index Offers Surprises" (The Chronicle, November 16) with great interest. Your headline writer's promise that it would contain surprises was right on target.

When I pulled up the rankings in geography, I learned that Cornell University ranked ninth. Cornell has a Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, but its geological sciences section does not list geography among its subfields. A ninth-place national ranking in geography is