The CRA Taulbee Survey

The CRA Taulbee Survey is the principal source of information on the enrollment, production, and employment of Ph.D.s in information, computer science and computer engineering (I, CS & CE) and in providing salary and demographic data for faculty in I, CS & CE in North America. Statistics given include gender and ethnicity breakdowns.

Conducted each fall since 1974, the survey in general covers the preceding academic year. Faculty salary data, however, are for the current year. The survey has always had an excellent response rate–a fact which we believe lends great credibility to the result.

Preliminary results are made available in mid-December only to survey respondents. Respondents and CRA member departments receive the final results before publication in the May CRN.

The title of the survey honors Orrin E. Taulbee of the University of Pittsburgh, who conducted these surveys for the Computer Science Board until 1984, with retrospective annual data going back to 1970.

Data Analysis in CRN

  • Expanding the Pipeline: Gender and Ethnic Differences in PhD Specialty Areas

    This article examines gender and residency/ethnicity differences in PhD specialty areas as reported to the CRA Taulbee Survey from 2012-2018. The Taulbee Survey is conducted each fall and, among other questions, asks doctoral departments of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information for data about each PhD they awarded in the previous academic year. The data on each new PhD includes gender, residency/race/ethnicity, and PhD specialty area. A total of 12,968 PhDs were awarded by Taulbee respondents during the 7 year period from 2012-2018.

  • The CRA Taulbee Survey and Teaching Faculty Data

    Non-tenure-track teaching faculty are becoming more important to doctoral departments to help them meet their educational goals and responsibilities, particularly in response to the current enrollments surge. In the Generation CS report (available at https://cra.org/data/Generation-CS/), 65% of doctoral departments reported in fall 2015 that they had increased the number of teaching faculty on continuing appointments in response to increased enrollments, and an additional 16% were considering it. Similarly, between fall 2006 and fall 2016, the proportion of Taulbee Survey respondents reporting at least one full-time non-tenure-track teaching faculty member increased from 81% to 87% and, more notably, the median number of such teaching faculty at the departments reporting nonzero counts rose from 3 to 6.

  • Booming Enrollments – What is the Impact?

    We are in the throes of another undergraduate enrollment surge. The number of new CS/CE majors in bachelor’s programs at Taulbee departments this year has reached the peak levels seen at the end of the dot-com era. While this is better news than the opposite (declining enrollments), it is critical that the field take into account how policies and efforts to manage the enrollment surge will affect groups that are under-represented in computing.

  • 2014 Taulbee Report Sneak Preview

    The 2014 Taulbee Report will be published in the May 2015 issue of CRN. As we have done for the past few years, we’re providing a preview of the degree and enrollment numbers for bachelor’s and doctoral level programs in the departments responding to the survey.

  • 2013 Taulbee Report Sneak Preview

    The 2013 Taulbee Report will be published in the May 2014 issue of CRN. However, as we did last year, we’re offering you a preview of the degree and enrollment numbers for bachelor’s and doctoral level programs in the departments responding to the survey. For the second year in a row, the total number of Ph.D.s awarded was the highest ever reported in Taulbee. The departments that responded this year reported 1,991 graduates in 2012-13, surpassing the 1,929 reported for 2011-12 by last year’s respondents.

  • Taulbee in Depth: Department Space per Faculty Member

    Every three years, the CRA Taulbee Survey asks a set of Department Profiles questions including questions about department space. In the full Taulbee report published in CRN in May 2013, we reported on the space data collected in fall 2012. Tables in that report provided percentiles for department space in the categories of total space, offices, conference and seminar rooms, research labs, and instructional labs. The percentiles were across all departments of a given type (US CS Public, US CS Private, US CE, US Information, and Canadian) without regard for the size of the department. However, department size is clearly a major determiner of space. To allow departments to better compare their own space allocations to the overall Taulbee numbers, this analysis reports on space per faculty member in two ways: by number of tenured and tenure-track faculty, and by number of tenured and tenure-track faculty plus number of research faculty and postdocs. Those values were computed for each department; percentiles of the normalized space for all US departments and for each type of department are given in tables.

  • 2012 Taulbee Report Sneak Preview

    The full 2012 Taulbee Report will be published in the May 2013 issue of CRN. However, the degree and enrollment numbers for bachelor’s and doctoral level programs in the departments responding to the survey have been compiled at this time, and they should be of interest to our members and readership. Thus, we are providing a sneak preview into these data.

  • Taulbee In-Depth: Employment of New PhDs Outside North America

    Since 2006, the CRA Taulbee Survey has collected data on PhD recipients in a way that allows us to look at patterns in their employment and demographics. This article considers PhDs who take employment outside North America: where do they go, who goes, and what kind of employment do they take?

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