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The CRA Taulbee Survey is the principal statistical survey documenting doctoral education, academic employment, and faculty compensation across computer science, computer engineering, and information departments in North America. Administered annually by the Computing Research Association (CRA), the survey serves as the authoritative quantitative benchmark for university department chairs, institutional researchers, and faculty recruitment committees evaluating academic competitiveness. The data collection captures comprehensive metrics across undergraduate enrollments, graduate degree production, postdoctoral appointments, and faculty salary percentiles.
Within academic computer science, the survey provides longitudinal evidence that informs institutional resource allocations, gender and ethnic diversity initiatives, and doctoral training strategies. First conducted in 1974 with retrospective annual data reaching back to 1970, the survey is named in honor of Orrin E. Taulbee of the University of Pittsburgh, who directed the survey’s foundational methodologies for the Computer Science Board through 1984.
What it is
The CRA Taulbee Survey is an annual census of North American doctoral-granting departments in computing fields. It aggregates verified departmental reports into comparative statistical summaries that track academic pipeline capacity, faculty hiring, and professional trajectories for computing doctorates. The survey operates through two distinct instruments administered in parallel each autumn:
- The Taulbee Salary Survey: Collects current academic-year salary figures for tenure-track, teaching, and research faculty. Data are segmented by academic rank (full professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and non-tenure teaching faculty) and cross-tabulated by geographic region, public versus private institutional governance, and department prestige tiers based on national rankings.
- The Taulbee Main Survey: Collects data on the preceding academic year’s student enrollments, graduation counts, and demographic characteristics across bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs. It includes specialized modules tracking doctoral completion rates, specialized research subdisciplines, post-graduation employment sectors, and graduate student financial support (stipends and tuition waivers).
Who runs it and what it covers
The survey is governed and administered by the Computing Research Association, an organization representing over 250 North American academic departments, corporate industrial research laboratories, and affiliated professional societies. Federal agencies such as NSF CISE frequently rely on Taulbee data to assess national scientific workforce capacity and monitor graduate pipeline stability.
The target survey universe encompasses all academic units in the United States and Canada that confer Ph.D. degrees in:
- Computer Science (CS): Free-standing computer science departments housed within engineering schools or colleges of arts and sciences.
- Computer Engineering (CE): Joint electrical and computer engineering departments or independent computer engineering divisions.
- Information (I): Information schools (iSchools) and information technology academic units that grant computing doctorates.
The survey achieves high departmental participation rates, routinely exceeding 75% to 80% among eligible doctoral-granting units. This response rate ensures high statistical validity across both public and private research universities. The survey tracks demographic data using standardized federal reporting classifications for gender, race, and ethnicity, offering clear visibility into diversity trends across academic cohorts. In research settings managing longitudinal datasets, aligning survey metadata with institutional records follows principles detailed in our overview of data dictionaries in research data management.
How to search or use it
Researchers, administrators, and policy analysts interact with Taulbee data through designated institutional portals, published analytical reports, and interactive visualization tools:
- Institutional Data Collection (September to December): Designated department chairs or departmental administrators access the CRA survey portal via authenticated credentials provided by the CRA survey coordinator. Departments enter institutional enrollments, degree counts, and individual faculty salary entries using standardized spreadsheet templates provided in the respondent resource hub.
- Preliminary Respondent Access (December): In mid-December, CRA generates preliminary salary tables accessible exclusively to participating department chairs. These embargoed preliminary reports provide early benchmarking figures that department leaders utilize during spring faculty recruitment cycles and budget negotiations.
- Final Analytical Reports (May): Comprehensive, peer-reviewed survey analyses are published in the May issue of Computing Research News (CRN) and archived publicly on the CRA website. These reports present detailed cross-tabulations of faculty salary distributions, departmental hiring success, and student graduation projections. In computer science, where conference proceedings carry high evaluative weight alongside journals, faculty hiring benchmarks published in Taulbee interact directly with standards discussed in our analysis of CS conference vs journal authorship credit.
- Interactive Dashboard Exploration: The CRA Taulbee Survey Dashboard allows users to query longitudinal trends dynamically. Users filter aggregate datasets by degree level, geographic region, institution type, and demographic variables to generate custom trend graphs and tabular exports.
Strengths and limits
Understanding both the analytical advantages and structural constraints of the Taulbee dataset is essential for proper institutional benchmarking:
- Key Strengths:
- High Domain Granularity: Unlike broad government surveys that group computing with mathematics or general engineering, Taulbee isolates specific computing subfields and academic departmental structures.
- Timely Salary Benchmarks: Collecting current-year faculty salaries in October and distributing preliminary data by December delivers actionable market compensation data during active hiring seasons.
- Reliable Doctorate Employment Tracking: Documents detailed initial employment placement across North American industry, tenure-track academia, government laboratories, and overseas destinations.
- Important Limitations:
- Doctoral-Granting Focus: The survey universe is restricted to institutions granting computing Ph.D.s. Non-doctoral institutions (undergraduate colleges and master’s-only universities) are excluded from the core Taulbee sample, though CRA addresses them through separate instruments such as the CRA NDC Study.
- Confidentiality and Small-Cell Suppression: To safeguard individual compensation privacy and institutional anonymity, salary percentiles are suppressed in specialized categories where fewer than five departments or individuals report data.
- Self-Reported Departmental Data: Figures reflect administrative reporting from academic departments rather than centrally audited federal tax filings, occasionally introducing variance in how interdisciplinary joint appointments are categorized.
Alternatives
While the Taulbee Survey remains the gold standard for North American doctoral computing departments, several alternative surveys provide complementary workforce and higher education metrics:
| Survey / Data Source | Operating Body | Survey Scope & Target Universe | Key Focus Areas |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRA Taulbee Survey | Computing Research Association (CRA) | North American Ph.D.-granting CS, CE, and Information departments | Doctoral production, enrollments, demographics, and faculty salary percentiles. |
| CRA NDC Study | CRA / ACM Joint Committee | Non-doctoral granting academic computing departments | Undergraduate enrollments, faculty teaching loads, and retention at teaching-focused colleges. |
| IPEDS | National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) | All Title IV post-secondary institutions in the United States | Mandatory federal reporting on degree completions, tuition, financial aid, and institutional finance. |
| NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates (GSS) | National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) | All US academic institutions granting graduate degrees in STEM | Federal research funding mechanisms, graduate assistantships, fellowships, and postdocs across all science disciplines. |
FAQ
Who participates in the CRA Taulbee Survey?
Participation is open to all academic units in the United States and Canada that offer Ph.D. degrees in computer science, computer engineering, or information disciplines. Over 200 doctoral departments participate annually.
When are Taulbee Survey salary results released?
Preliminary salary results are distributed in mid-December exclusively to participating department chairs to support spring hiring. Final comprehensive results covering salaries, enrollments, and degrees are published publicly in the May issue of Computing Research News.
Can students or prospective faculty access Taulbee salary tables?
Preliminary reports are restricted to participating department chairs. However, the final May reports and the interactive CRA Taulbee Survey Dashboard are publicly accessible and widely consulted by job candidates evaluating academic compensation offers.
How does the Taulbee Survey protect faculty salary privacy?
CRA reports salary data strictly as statistical summaries (minimum, 10th percentile, 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, 90th percentile, and maximum). Cells with fewer than five reported salaries are withheld to prevent reverse identification.
Sources
- Computing Research Association, “The CRA Taulbee Survey,” Official Resource Portal, https://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/ (Read 2026-11-07).
- Computing Research Association, “CRA Taulbee Respondent Resource Page,” Documentation and Guidelines, https://datavisualization.cra.org/TaulbeeSurvey/Taulbee_Resource_Page.html (Read 2026-11-07).
- Computing Research Association, “Taulbee Survey 2024: Annual Report,” Comprehensive Findings, https://datavisualization.cra.org/TaulbeeSurvey/CRA_Taulbee_Survey_Report_2024.html (Read 2026-11-07).
- Computing Research Association, “CRA Taulbee Survey Dashboard,” Data Analytics and Visualization, https://datavisualization.cra.org/TaulbeeReports/TaulbeeSurveyDashboard.html (Read 2026-11-07).
