Relative prestige of criminal justice doctoral programs

Organizational sets are made up of organizations with interchangeable personnel, important activity common to members, and a prestige order. The prestige order in other academic disciplines has been identified, and the survey reported here was an attempt to provide some preliminary information on the prestige order among criminal justice doctoral programs. A survey of a sample of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences members and other criminal justice educators revealed several programs consistently receiving high ratings. These programs are likely to have a substantial influence on the development of criminal justice graduate education by providing models for graduate programs, personnel to staff criminal justice programs, and establishing the standards by which quality education will be defined. In addition, the importance of a list of characteristics pertaining to quality education was examined, and library resources and several faculty attributes emerged as those perceived as most important for quality doctoral education in criminal justice.