What are the most prestigious communication doctoral programs in the US?

According to this paper, programs that are most central in the hiring network (in terms of outdegrees or indegrees?), are the most pretigious. The winners are below….

This research examines the prestige of doctoral degree programs in communication based on a network analysis of program links among 102 doctoral programs and 2,194 tenure-track faculty members. University of Wisconsin–Madison (Journalism & Mass Communication), Michigan State University (Communication), University of Texas-Austin (Communication Studies), and University of Illinois (Speech Communication) are the top four programs in terms of placement centrality in communication. Centrality of programs in this network, measured by out-degree, closeness centrality, and eigenvector indices, is positively related to subjective prestige ratings of faculty and department chairs (Neuendorf, Skalski, Atkin, Kogler-Hill, & Perloff, 2007). Faculty size was also related to network centrality and interdisciplinarity of program. Further, centrality of programs is positively related to program prestige controlling for faculty size.