Maclean's University Rankings

Maclean’s is a very popular Canadian news magazine. Every year in a special issue they rank Canadian universities by different things like sports program, class size and other things. This issue is the most read. For many years I went out of my way to get a copy of the rankings issue. Every year it’s big news and makes people discuss post secondary education.

I was on the University of Alberta’s site and they have opted out of the Maclean’s rankings until further notice. Initially not only U of A but 10 of the other big universities including UBC, SFU, Mcmaster and University of Toronto have decided not to participate in the rankings. But “The revolt against Maclean's university rankings has grown to include 22 schools, casting doubt on the magazine's claim it'll be able to produce a credible ranking by its November publication date.”

It’ll be interesting to see how they come up with the rankings when the 22 major schools aren’t going to give Macleans the data they need to compile the standings.

From their press release:

‘In various ways and for some years, many institutional spokespersons have expressed considerable reservations about the methodology used in the Maclean’s university survey and the validity of some of the measures used. Thus far, these serious concerns have gone largely unaddressed, and there is still no evidence that Maclean’s intends to respond to them.

…it is truly hard for us to justify the investment of public funds required to generate customized data for your survey when those data are compiled in ways that we regard as over-simplified and arbitrary.

…The variables selected by Maclean’s also fail to capture the breadth of experiences students say are important in their university education such as, for example, extra-curricular activities or the opportunity for rich and diverse interactions with peers and faculty outside the classroom.

…We are also concerned by Maclean’s recent attempt to draw comparisons of student experience across incomparable surveys of student engagement, and Maclean's reliance on survey data with low response rates and all the associated response biases that arise from skewed profiles of respondents. The responsible compilation and comparison of data is a core tenet of academic research. Several universities already show student survey data, in context, on their own web sites and question Maclean's decision to pull different kinds of data out of context and compare “apples and oranges”. Maclean’s treatment of these survey data, in our view, fails to give appropriate notice to these methodological limitations.

….We remain open to the possibility of collaborating with Maclean’s at some future date, particularly if we can agree on means to ensure that the data will be valid and the analyses truly informative. Meanwhile, we will continue to publish data on our websites to facilitate informed student and family choice.'