The Philosophical Gourmet Report (also known as the Leiter Report) edited by Philosophy and Law professor Brian Leiter — in response to the Gourman Report — is a ranking of philosophy departments in the English-speaking world, based on a survey of philosophers who are nominated as evaluators by the Report's Advisory Board. Its purpose is to provide guidance to prospective Ph.D students, particularly those students who intend to pursue a professional career in academic philosophy.
As of December 2004, there are a total of 110 philosophy Ph.D programs in the U.S. alone. In its latest version (2006–2008) the Report ranks the top 50 programs in the United States, the top 15 in the United Kingdom, the top five in Canada and the top five in Australasia. The rankings are based primarily on perceived quality of the philosophical work of the faculty members.
The Report was first compiled and distributed in 1989 and first appeared on the web in 1996; it has been distributed by Blackwell since 1997.
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The report's rankings are based on an anonymous survey of faculty members of philosophy departments throughout the English-speaking world. Respondents are asked to assign scores from one to five to lists of the faculty of each department (the name of the department is suppressed in the survey questionnaire.) The results are compiled and sorted into an ordinal ranking which used to be subdivided into "peer groups," but no longer is.