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Sixth Again: Macleans ranks U of R in the middle of the pack for the second year in a row
by Steven Kiser
the Carillon
Maclean’s magazine came out with their annual ranking of Canadian post-secondary institutions recently, with the University of Regina maintaining its ranking from last year. Out of the 11 comprehensive universities across the country that were compared to the U of R, it managed to ranked sixth.
The Canadian universities are divided into three different categories: undergraduate (institutions that provide minimal doctorate degrees), comprehensive (institutions that can graduate PhDs) and medicinal/doctoral.
Maclean’s grades the schools based upon information they are given by the universities, as well as questions answered by councillors, administrators.
The categories that the U of R ranked highly in include average entering grade, class sizes, and scholarships and bursaries. This comes as good news to Barbara Pollock, the executive director of university relations. “We are good at a lot of things; Maclean’s views of us and everybody else are really good. Sixth place is a good place to be, because we are in the middle of a really good pack,” says Pollock.
Unfortunately, Maclean’s did rank some aspects of the University of Regina a little low. Financial support from alumni, as well as other alumni support was ranked rather low, as well as library acquisition. “We are young, and our alumni are just starting to reach that time of their lives when they have disposable income,” Pollock remarks, “there is also a thought out there that people are only considered alumni at their grad schools, and they usually don’t support two schools.”
The library issue is not of huge concern, because last year allowed for the numbers from 2001 and 2002 to be combined into one fiscal reporting period, making the numbers seem higher than they usually are. This allowed for a significant drop when the numbers from 2003 were calculated.
The U of R has plans to improve on some of the things deemed important by Maclean’s, but not for the sake of the rankings. “We have no intentions to improve on what Maclean’s says we need to,” states Pollock. The university has a prepatory campaign prepared to drive up the numbers and dollar amounts of scholarships and bursaries. In addition, University of Regina executives want to see an increase in alumni support, reputation, and the number of faculty members who have PhDs.
Not to be forgotten, Pollock feels that there are a number of things that the U of R does that does not receive proper recognition. “Maclean’s does not necessarily get into the things that we, the faculty and students value,” Pollock says, “they do not rank our work with Aboriginal people, for example.”
Regardless of the accuracy of the Maclean’s rankings, students do rely upon the yearly issue of the news magazine to help with the post-secondary education decisions. “We don’t know how much weight Maclean’s has on students, but we do know that they use it as a reference,” admits Pollock.
The usefulness of the Maclean’s university issue cannot be underplayed. Students from all over Canada use it every year to aid them in choosing which university they will attend. Despite the information printed in the magazine and the usefulness of it, Barbara Pollock makes a valid point. She asserts that “there is a weighting, but it isn’t thousands of students that who decide what goes in, it is Maclean’s.”
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