Eleven Universities Stop Participating in Maclean's Rankings
Eleven Canadian universities have sent a letter [PDF] to Maclean's magazine, informing the magazine that they "will not be participating in the 2006 Maclean's questionnaire." They objected to the "arbitrary" way in which multiple variables (such as class sizes, library capacity, and reputation) were combined together into a single ranking. They objected in particular to the "reputation" value, which is calculated from a survey that has been receiving a very low response rate.
However, Maclean's is not backing down. Tony Keller, managing editor of special projects for Maclean's, promised that the rankings would continue, and that data from the eleven withdrawing universities would be retrieved from "other sources" or from access to information requests. The latter strategy could prove to be expensive for the withdrawing universities, since all requests for information under freedom-of-information laws need to be processed by specialized staff. (Or at least that is the case at SFU....)
The decision by eleven universities to stop participating in the survey may seriously affect the survey. Nine of the eleven universities are classified as "Medical/Doctoral" universities by Maclean's university (according to their 2005 survey results), comprising a clear majority of "Medical/Doctoral" universities in Canada. Simon Fraser University, a "Comprehensive" school, and the University of Lethbridge, a "Primarily Undergraduate" university, make up the remainder of the anti-rankings alliance.
Eleven Canadian universities have sent a letter [PDF] to Maclean's magazine, informing the magazine that they "will not be participating in the 2006 Maclean's questionnaire." They objected to the "arbitrary" way in which multiple variables (such as class sizes, library capacity, and reputation) were combined together into a single ranking. They objected in particular to the "reputation" value, which is calculated from a survey that has been receiving a very low response rate.
However, Maclean's is not backing down. Tony Keller, managing editor of special projects for Maclean's, promised that the rankings would continue, and that data from the eleven withdrawing universities would be retrieved from "other sources" or from access to information requests. The latter strategy could prove to be expensive for the withdrawing universities, since all requests for information under freedom-of-information laws need to be processed by specialized staff. (Or at least that is the case at SFU....)
The decision by eleven universities to stop participating in the survey may seriously affect the survey. Nine of the eleven universities are classified as "Medical/Doctoral" universities by Maclean's university (according to their 2005 survey results), comprising a clear majority of "Medical/Doctoral" universities in Canada. Simon Fraser University, a "Comprehensive" school, and the University of Lethbridge, a "Primarily Undergraduate" university, make up the remainder of the anti-rankings alliance.
Labels: post-secondary_education, sfu
5 Comments:
Wow talk about old news. This is probably the last place I have seen this information.
In my defense,
(a) I only arrived home from vacation yesterday, and
(b) the letter from the universities was only sent three days ago.
I spoke with Mr. Keller on the phone today and he had a nice retort to the letter:
“The universities are saying that you can’t combine a bunch of grades together into a grade point average. Right.”
He's got a point.
titus,
anything new GIC meeting yesterday?
Well even though it is old news at least some schools have wised up to the rankings, finaly
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