The present study only serves to quantify what is generally well known in the physics community: throughout the twentieth century a consensus has developed among physicists that the top priority is the push to understand nature at ever smaller distance scales. This priority is quantitatively balanced against the desire to also contribute to the current march of technology. Presumably, if every physics department adopted the optimum research profile, the NRC rankings would be purely a function of the total faculty size (perhaps to within 8% or less on the average).     There is evidence that the physics community over the course of the last decade has moved, albeit very slowly, toward this balance. Nevertheless, it is clear that most physics departments are far from the optimal balance. It is, therefore, obvious that many departments have priorities and values that are not those of the physics community as a whole. Often physics departments propose expansions that are not those that would maximize the department's perceived quality among physics departments. Usually deans and other university administrators are not informed that the proposed plans are not designed to maximize departmental rank but are aimed at other goals.

    What are these other priorities and values that take precedence over a department's stature in the physics community? They might take the form of a desire to maximize external funding, physics degree production, or service to local industries. It could well be, of course, that any attempt to maximize these factors without optimizing one's standing in the physics community is futile at least in the long term.

        We believe the current study shows that the NRC rankings are not purely subjective; they can be quantitatively understood at the 92% level by how well a department's research profile conforms to the values of the academic physics community. The remaining 8% includes the effect of historical and geographic prejudice, the effect of true excellence of a given faculty above or below the average, and presumably some irreducible randomness.
     The rankings do not correlate well with traditional measures of excellence such as citations per paper (see www.phy.tulane.edu/table.html).


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