The education website highered.com published a March 30, 2007 story about a new ranking system developed by PhDs.org for ranking graduate departments. The new system allows users to do their own weighting of various factors, such as prestige of professors and time to complete degree. The article notes that the Survey of Earned Doctorates, which NORC conducts annually on behalf of the National Science Foundation and other sponsors, is one of several sources of data used in the new system. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is one of the sponsors of PhDs.org’s new system.