Aha. Just 2 weeks ago, I was having a heated discussion with somebody who was claiming that her institution of choice, St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, was the single best university in Canada. I disagreed and mentioned that her basis for this argument, the annual Maclean’s magazine rankings, was just one study and she did not take into consideration other intangibles and factors.

Lo and behold, CBC News has reported today that 11 of Canada’s universities have decided to opt out from this year’s rankings.

The universities said they found it inappropriate that the survey collects data on a wide range of things — such as class size, faculty, finances, library and reputation — and then arbitrarily assigns weightings to generate a single ranking number.

They were also troubled by the magazine’s reliance on survey data with low response rates and the practice of using different kinds of data out of context, resulting in “apples and oranges” comparisons.

They have also mentioned that they’ve made similar comments to the Maclean’s staff before, but the magazine has ignored them for years. While the universities collect and provide their own comprehensive data from internal research, Maclean’s prefers to use a smaller sample and declare their results as all-fitting.

These aren’t minor, low-ranking universities either:

• University of Toronto
• McMaster University
• University of Ottawa
• University of British Columbia
• Simon Fraser University
• University of Alberta
• University of Calgary
• University of Lethbridge
• University of Manitoba
• Université de Montréal
• Dalhousie University

Most of the above are city-based universities who are tired of seeing themselves demolished in the rankings by small-town Maritimes primarily undergraduate universities, such as St. Francis Xavier and my own Mount Allison.

What does this mean to me? Well, it proves to me that nobody should defer their decisions for universities based on a ranking by a magazine trying to sell more copies. University is a big step and they should do some more research by themselves. The rankings will still sell magazines, and Maclean’s wouldn’t take too much of a hit in the aftermath of this walk-out. The 11 big universities who have opt-ed out of this year’s rankings wouldn’t seen any negative effects either, since they are large enough to be able to maintain their enrollment.

It does prove, however, that the Maclean’s university rankings weren’t stable enough to be used in a boastful manner anyways.

Link: CBC News: 11 universities bail out of Maclean’s survey

This ClashBang.com article was written by Chris Chu. Tired of privately venting his frustration in vain, Chris decided to share his discontent with the rest of the world.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 2:06 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.