The Maclean’s Survey of Canadian Universities

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Table of Contents

Background Information
The Maclean’s Survey of ranking Canadian Universities
Rate My Professors
Critiques
Personal view
Reference

Background Information

Canadians are known to be the most educated people in the world. Approximately 47 percent of the working-class people in Canada have schooled beyond secondary school. In addition, 55 percent of the Canadian individuals who are aged 25 to 34 have attended tertiary school (college or university). Results of the best schools in Canada for the past three years have been published by Maclean’s and they highlight sometimes the critical picture or flattering of Canadian undergraduate education. Universities in Canada are large and not all have perfect educators of the students. Therefore, there are several techniques used to rank the schools and the professors in Canada (Keller, 2009, par.2).

One of the weekly magazines used in Canada to report on culture, pop, politics, and current proceedings from a neo-traditional view is the Maclean’s. This magazine was founded in the year 1905 by Toronto entrepreneur or journalist John Bayne Maclean. Currently, Maclean’s is still one of the dominating sources of information and news in Canada. Maclean’s is also known for ranking the Canadian universities for their programs at the undergraduate level annually. In addition, Maclean’s is famous for its yearly announcement of the top 100 employees in Canada. The publication of Maclean’s on the ranking of Canadian universities is available or published in March every year. The Maclean’s universities ranking guide includes a collection of various lists and diagrams evaluating the different features of universities in different groups. For example in the year 2006, the three major areas were; the general rankings, magazine’s national status rankings, and the surveys of the university students (Maclean’s Magazine, n.d, par2).

Professors are also ranked in Canada. Most of the students in Canada before scheduling any class, always visit the famous website “rate my professor.com” to get more information on the professors to choose. Rate my professor is also being used in the ranking of the lawyers and doctors by their clients. (Edwards, 2007, par.1).

The Maclean’s Survey of ranking Canadian Universities

Maclean’s rankings evaluate the universities in Canada based on different factors which are; library volume, faculty achievement in getting national research funding and the size of the class, and their average grades. The purpose of the survey is to give a general idea of the quality of services and instructions offered to students studying in public universities in the country. Maclean’s ranks the universities in the following categories; Medical Doctoral, Comprehensive, and Primarily Undergraduate depending on the levels of financial support of the research. Universities categorized in the Primarily Undergraduate group focus mostly on undergraduate education with few graduate courses. Schools in the Comprehensive category have important research work and several graduate and undergraduate courses which comprise professional degrees. Finally, schools in the Medical Doctoral category have a wide variety of research and Ph.D. courses and also comprise of the medical schools (Dwyer, 2006, par.2).

In each mentioned category above, Maclean’s ranks the universities on different aspects of performance indicators in six different areas. Generally, universities in the Primarily Undergraduate are graded on 22 performance measures, Comprehensive is graded on 23, and Medical Doctoral is ranked on 24. Maclean’s magazine does not grade any school with less than 1,000 students on full-time programs or those with restrictions due to specific missions and religion (Dwyer, 2006, par.3).

The method used to collect data from the universities by Maclean is using self-administered questionnaires which are distributed to the universities. Moreover, more information is obtained by Maclean’s from the several students and school awards from 45 administering organizations. The other method used is reputation surveys which are offered to principals and guidance counselors in high schools, heads of agencies, university leaders, corporate and CEOs recruiters across the country inquiring their views on the improvement and quality of universities in Canada (Dwyer, 2006, par.4).

Results from the different areas (student body, classes, library, faculty, finance, and reputation) in the year 2006 are as follows. From the student body which is represented by 22 to 23 percent of final scores, Maclean’s collects data from new students’ mean grades from high school (11%) and percentage of those with a mean of 75% or higher (2%). This method involves students whose secondary school mean scores were used to admit them into the universities. The percentage of students from outside the province in the first-year undergraduate level are also counted (1.5%). The proportion of the students from other countries who are in the first-year undergraduate level (0.5%) is also determined. For Comprehensive and Medical Doctoral universities, the proportion of the intercontinental students in the graduate class (1%) is also determined. Moreover, Maclean’s obtain data on the achievement of the student body at winning the country academic rewards (3%) within five years period. Some of the rewards are the Fulbright awards, scholarships offered by professional associations, and Rhodes Scholarships among others (Dwyer, 2006, par.12).

When ranking the classes which are represented by 17 to 18 percent, Maclean’s took the number of the whole distribution of class sizes at the levels of first and second (7.5% for the schools in the Primarily Undergraduate category and 7 percent represent the other two groupings). 7.5 percent stands for third and fourth-year levels for schools in the Primarily Undergraduate category and 7 percent stands for the other two categories (Dwyer, 2006, par.13). The ranking of faculty is represented by 17% where Maclean’s determined the proportion of the schools with PhDs (3%) and the number of the schools which won the country awards. Moreover, Maclean’s also determined the achievement of the valid school in winning the research funding from one of the three main federal agencies; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada Dwyer, 2006, par.14).

Ranking in the library sectors is represented by 12% and in this sector; Maclean’s evaluated the depth and currency gathered. Universities gained marks for the number of volumes and volume depending on the number of students on full-time programs. The proportions were 4% for the Comprehensive and Primarily Undergraduate and for Medical Doctoral, 3% (Dwyer, 2006, par.15). 12 % was used to represent the amount of cash that was available to cater for expenses for each student on full-time program (3.3%) and proportion for the budget used on services of each student (4.3%) and for bursaries and scholarship (4.3%)

(Dwyer, 2006, par.16). Finally, Maclean’s assessed the faculty reputation within the community and also with the school’s graduates. By use of survey (16%), respondents graded the universities into three groups; most Innovative and leaders of tomorrow, highest quality and best overall stands for the sum of the scores Dwyer, 2006, par.17).

Rate My Professors

This is the largest website that is used by the students to rank the professors with approximately 6.8 million students rating more than one million professors. Most college and university students use the site that assists them in scheduling their classes and ranking the past and current professors based on their clarity and assistance. This site allows the student to look for professors by their names and department. In addition, the students can obtain more information by reading what other students have written about the past classes and decide to either register for the course or not (Costello, 2008, par.2).

The ranking of the professors is based on four different factors; clarity, ease, rater interest, and helpfulness. According to the key used in ranking; sad, blue face stands for poor quality, mediocre, green face stands for average quality, and a face that looks jovial stands for good quality. The highest score a professor can get is five and any professor with less than three is said to be very poor. Different varieties of ratings are due to particular experiences in the classes that may not be valid to all the students (Costello, 2008, par.2).

Professors are not left out on this site. They also get an opportunity to react to the students’ comments. The professors upload videos and react to the several comments about their methods of teaching. On the other hand, the students can upload the videos used by the professors and comment on them. The top 50 schools are graded in different groups annually; for example, top-graded schools, highest-ranked professors, and standouts (rating of the professors on positive comments rather than numerical rating) (Costello, 2008, par.9).

Critiques

Most of the schools have withdrawn from participating in Maclean’s survey of ranking the Canadian universities. Most of them argue that the methodology used is questionable. Professor B. Muthukrishnan as cited by Samarasekera (2007, par.1), says that he acknowledges Maclean’s magazine and its ways of ranking the universities in Canada. He says that this form of ranking depends on particular data collected from different institutions. The validity or correctness of the gathered information is questionable since there are no specific techniques used to confirm the information. In addition, the analysis of the data is made depending on the average of the data collected. This kind of information is irrelevant and has no importance as mean scores may range from one year to another according to the admission of a specific year. In simplicity, most of the information collected may not assist the students to decide the appropriate university they should apply to.

The use of the rate my professor’s site which is used by most of the students in the colleges and universities to assist them in selecting the best professor has been criticized by many people. For example, Qwerty as cited by MTV Networks (2008, par.26) says that any good student can obtain the best grade she or he desires whether the professor is good or bad. This is because it is the responsibility of the student to learn and not of the professors. Therefore, if one does not learn or understand anything it is his or her fault. Failure to learn or understand may happen because one did not participate in the lesson or did not take it upon him or herself to learn and understand the course. Moreover, one needs to understand she or he is no longer in high school but at the tertiary level and the main focus is to learn hence one can succeed if he or she wants.

Personal view

In my opinion, the use of Maclean’s to rank Canadian universities is not the appropriate way for students to decide on which university to attend. This is because the information collected is questionable since there is no specific technique that has been identified to confirm the validity of the information. Most of the schools may provide inaccurate data because they want to be ranked among the top schools hence being in a position to attract many students to apply to their schools. According to Maclean, schools are grouped into three categories; Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive, and Medical Doctoral. Therefore, this grouping may not be adequate to help an individual to understand the phenomenon in every school because Maclean’s does not compile all the information of every school.

Most people believe that even if most of the schools fail to participate in Maclean’s survey, Maclean’s will always get an alternative to gather similar data. This is not ethical since in research one should seek consent before collecting any data from the respondents. Moreover, some information is confidential and should not be public. In my opinion, one can not rely on rate my professors to decide on which professor is the best. This is because all of us are different from one another and the same case applies to the professors. Some professors are hard while others are easy and the important thing is to acquire knowledge and succeed despite the challenges one may encounter. In addition, anybody can contribute to the ranking of the professors whether they know how to rate effectively or not and whether they are part of the class or not. Therefore, one can not be confident in the methods used to rank the universities and professors to help him or her to decide on the university to attend due to the above-mentioned reasons.

The rating of individual professors should not be published because the methods used are biased and invalid. Students should also not be ranked publicly since every school has different ways of grading their students. Hence, the methods used by Maclean’s are not uniform to be used in ranking all the students in different schools.

In my opinion, the best way to rank universities in Canada is to categorize them into different groups according to how they grade their students, the number of students in each class, and the average grades attained by the students. Then the best schools should be published depending on their category. This will be a better way than Maclean’s which will help the students in deciding which schools they should attend. Professors in the universities should not be rated as individuals since anyone can post a comment on the site giving out a wrong impression towards a certain professor which will discourage many students from applying for a certain course.

Reference

Costello, S. (2008). Find out which Elon students rely on the site. Web.

Dwyer, M. (2006). Our 16th annual rankings.2009. Web.

Edwards, A. (2007). McIntosh ranks 12th in the nation on mtvU’s ratemyprofessors.com. Web.

Keller, T. (2009). Canada’s universities play on a world stage, but often fall short. Web.

Maclean’s Magazine, (n.d). History of Maclean’s. 2009. Web.

MTV Networks, (2008). Failing students easier than expected. Web.

Samarasekera, I. (2007). Comments on Rising Up Against Rankings. Web.

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