The latest rankings for “America’s Best Graduate Schools” were released March 12th by US News & World Report. The University of Washington Information School moved up from fourth to third place among U.S. master’s degree programs in library and information science (LIS) that are accredited by the American Library Association.
“The iSchool’s ranking reflects the quality of the students we attract and the reputation of our faculty in creating one of the best LIS programs in the country,” observed UW Provost Ana Mari Cauce. “We are particularly proud of maintaining the top ranking for our Law Librarianship program and our #2 ranking for Children and Youth Services.”
Joe Janes, chair of the MLIS program said, “The UW iSchool has a 100-year history of innovation. We are always changing to meet the needs of those we serve, whether that’s adding our online program a decade ago, revising our curriculum in areas such as research, information behavior, and technology, or introducing a capstone option for graduating students."
According to Janes, one of the iSchool's many strengths is providing flexible career options. “Our graduates, in addition to traditional library settings, pursue careers as information architects, taxonomists, knowledge management specialists, and competitive intelligence analysts in industry, government and nonprofits. The improved ranking shows the confidence, as expressed by our peers, that we are doing things right, and preparing our graduates to shape the dynamic information world going forward.”
In addition to ranking #3 overall, the iSchool placed in five of the specialty areas including:
#5 in Digital Librarianship
#4 in Information Systems
#1 in Law Librarianship
#3 in School Library Media
#2 in Services for Children and Youth
It has been five years since the last survey was conducted of deans, program directors and select senior faculty of the 51 accredited library and information science graduate programs. The questionnaires ask individuals to rate the academic quality of programs at each institution on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).
Schools in the specialty rankings are based solely on nominations from school officials and are numerically ranked in descending order based on the number of nominations they received.