All Posts Tagged With: "higher education"
The Borg are here
We call them university presidents.
Does anybody remember the Borg from Star Trek? The Borg were a race of high-tech cyborgs who flew around the galaxy at dizzying speeds, looking for new races to conquer and turn into more cyborgs and so on. Once assimilated by the Borg, whatever light was in your human or Klingon or Vulcan eyes went out. Fitted with wires and components, you became a mindless drone working for the super-efficient collective. The Borg ships were incredibly powerful, but dim and ugly. Try to tell the Borg you don’t like their vision of the future? They dismiss your concerns as irrelevant, and they claim that they are the ones that see the real truth. And then they infect you with nano-probes.
I remind you all of this, because something like this is, as far as I can tell, is what Canada’s university presidents are trying to do to our institutions of higher education. Consider, for example, this horrifying article by two of them, Pierre Zundel and Patrick Deane. Here’s how the Borg Presidents make first contact:
success, though, will depend upon our managing to escape from the essentially nostalgic mindset that has hampered real pedagogical progress in our institutions for at least the last decade. We have been incapacitated by a witches’ brew whose ingredients are familiar to all – escalating costs, declining public investment, rising enrolments, proportionately declining faculty complements, and so on – yet we have failed to heed the advice we would normally give our students in such circumstances: to reorient ourselves to our goals and explore alternative or even radically different ways to approach them.
Resistance, as the Borg like to say, is futile. You will be reoriented.
Actually, what I teach my students is to question authority and notice the way they write and speak. Consider, for instance, nominalizations like “declining public investment.” By referring to it as a thing and not as a series of actions, the agents disappear and so does the moral responsibility. What is being elided here is that public investment didn’t just “decline” on its own; governments cut funding to universities because they decided other things were more important.
But the Borg don’t listen and they don’t turn back. They adapt and they keep coming.
Universities have typically responded to resource pressures with the simple expedient of cost reduction on the input side of the educational equation.
You see the new verbal weapon, here? Universities responded? No, university administrators responded. You responded. It was your idea to cut faculty and make bigger classes. You acquiesced, you sold us out, you failed to raise the alarm, you made the deal with the devil. Don’t pretend it was universities in general.
So what do we have now? Bad teaching. Because we have too few professors? No, because:
In this model (as in the famous Figuier depiction of Aristotle instructing Alexander the Great), the knowledge expert (the professor) tells the novice (the student) about his discipline. The former does the teaching, the latter does the learning, and, as the context for this encounter has worsened under pressure of declining resources, it is questionable whether either does so effectively. Even in the best circumstances this approach trivializes the role of the student and exaggerates the professing function in the learning process. The teaching technology model brings to mind some old industrial processes, before the discovery of catalysts, in which a huge amount of fossil fuel was consumed to provide the activation energy for chemical reactions.
Incredibly, the Presidents place the misbegotten origins of our ineffectual higher education system in Ancient Athens, the 19th century, and the early 20th century all at once (apparently platinum has been an industrial catalyst for around 50 years or so, though I don’t know if that’s the one they are thinking of). It’s worth noting that the modern university did not develop in any of those periods. And out of this historical mish-mash comes the incredible conclusion that the very act of being taught is insulting to the student and gives professors big egos to boot.
So what is to be done? The Borg know. Your technology is out of date. You will be assimilated:
The professor is not the only person responsible for helping the student learn. Others can be involved, including the students themselves, their peers, community members, community organizations, societies and institutions. We, the teachers, become more concerned with what the students are actually doing. We begin to think more broadly about the kinds of situations in which students learn. For example, other cultures and environments become a resource for helping students learn when we take part in international internships. The challenges of professional practice or the problems of certain social groups become opportunities to engage in problem-based or service learning.
To the extent that any of this makes any sense, it’s meaningless, because it’s what we are doing already. We already think about how students learn. We already involve the community and use problem-based learning. And we always have been doing these things.
But that’s not what the Borg really want. They want to destroy our individuality and add us to their perfection. And then the real attack begins:
Service and experiential learning require coordination and a new or greater commitment of staff time; this may change the ratio of academic to professional staff. Faculty members bring their scholarship and experience into an altered dynamic in which they contribute significantly as designers and facilitators rather than mainly dispensers of formal declarative knowledge.
Can you believe it? All we have to do to fix the Canadian university system is get rid of more professors and hire more administrators! Left to their own devices, our university presidents will have the most efficient universities in the world. There just won’t be anyone actually teaching anything. But don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of coordination.
In Star Trek, humanity fought against the Borg, and we have to fight now before it is too late. Because, of course, all the empty talk is designed to mask a sinister and destructive mission. The real problem with universities today isn’t the use of the lecture format. A great lecture can be a revelation — ask anyone who’s been to one. The problem isn’t the model of professors and students — people who know little need to get in rooms with people who know more. And the problem is not a lack of creativity — spend some time with actual teaching professors (something university presidents do little of) and you’ll see that.
The real problems are well known. The public education system does not adequately prepare students for university. Tuition fees are too high which has led to increased interest in marketable credentials rather than real, deep learning. Big universities place too much emphasis on research while small universities put too little emphasis on it.
University presidents could help fix these problems if they wanted to, but they have already been assimilated into the mindless collective that prizes efficiency above all else.
Shamelessly, the Presidents go on to give examples of how “in many institutions of all sizes across the country, faculty members make use of problem-based learning to help students develop content mastery, reasoning, and research and social interaction skills” even though they just finished saying that the problem with universities is that we don’t do these things! The Presidents claim that these things happen only in “pockets” and that expansion is what is needed.
Yes, expansion. So administrators can worry about “learning” and not “teaching,” as though students can learn just as much from their uninformed peers as they can from their more educated teachers. As if service is the same as study. As if all that matters in a classroom is the paradigm that’s in place. With professors deemed irrelevant, universities can be filled up with less expensive, more efficient, “coordinators.”
It makes sense from the point of view of efficiency. It’s also an outright attack on humane values, delivered without a shred of remorse. We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.
And we know what the result will be. A university with few or no professors is not a university in any way that matters. Like humans in the Star Trek world, we are the ones who explore and think and invent and create. A university without a large number of dedicated, independent professors will be like a Borg ship, an awesome and efficient nightmare.
In the movie First Contact, Captain Picard is pushed to retreat from a Borg attack and refuses. They advance, he says, and we fall back. They take more, and we fall back. The same thing is happening to universities now. They talk about “new realities” and we fall back. They refuse to promote the arts and humanities and we fall back. They seek more and more corporate involvement and we fall back.
Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
People who care about real, humane higher education in this country must fight for it, for it is in grave peril. We can no longer pretend that people who talk like Zundel and Deane are not the enemy. Whether they realize it or not, they are monsters and they will destroy us if we let them. Resistance is not futile. But first you have to resist.
Bachelor’s degree still worth it
Report finds that overall financial returns for university and college are equal
Canada produces more post-secondary graduates than any other country. That fact has often raised concerns over whether too many students are pursuing a higher education. Not so, according to a C.D. Howe study published last week. The paper, authored by Torben Drewes and Daniel Boothby, analyzed the average earnings for those with a university degree, college diploma, and a trade certificate, compared against those with only high school. They concluded that the earnings premium, between 1980 and 2005 has continued to rise.
For males with a university degree, they earned 32 per cent more than their high school counterparts in 1980, rising to 40 per cent in 1990 and 45 per cent in 2005. For females, the earnings premium was 60 per cent in 2005. The findings “suggests that we are quite right to promote accessibility in post-secondary education,” Drewes, who teaches economics at Trent University, said. “There is an insatiable demand for high skilled labour in this country.”
Canada’s high levels of educational attainment is largely attributed to producing more graduates from college and trades than any other OECD country, at 24 per cent of Canadians aged 25-64. The OECD average for this category is nine per cent. However, Canada graduates fewer people from university than other OECD countries, with 25 per cent of Canadians holding a degree, compared to 31 per cent for the United States and 32 per cent for Norway. Although the OECD average is 20 per cent.
Given that the earnings premium over high school is much lower for college graduates, at 17 per cent for males and 19 per cent for females, than for university graduates, Drewes and Boothby also considered whether this suggested that too many resources were being invested in non-university education. To answer the question, they looked at internal rates of return. They found that when accounting for the longer time required to complete a university degree, compared to a community college diploma, the difference in overall financial benefit between the two credentials narrowed.
The rate of return for males with a university degree, once opportunity costs were factored in, was 13 per cent, while it was it was 11 per cent for males with a college diploma. Females also saw a more narrow earnings gap between different types of education, though not as pronounced. The rate of return for females with a university degree is 17 per cent, compared to 11 per cent for those with a college education. “If we look at internal rates of return of return for college and university, they are being equalized,” Drewes said. “People follow the money.”
The one outlier was that females who had earned a trade certificate saw no increase over females with only high school.
McGuinty to merge higher ed and innovation ministers
Milloy will now be doing double duty
The Canadian Press is reporting that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty will be shuffling his cabinet following the resignation of a key minister who left to lead Toronto’s economic development agency.
Current Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities John Milloy will remain in his portfolio and be promoted to double duty as Minister of Research and Innovation.
This is a positive move by the Premier’s office, especially due to the overlap in infrastructure funding for universities between the two ministries.
I hope Milloy gains some of the staff from the present minister of research and innovation. That Minister’s office has been well-run during the past two years.
Milloy is one of the more talented members of the Executive Council and is more than capable of managing both portfolios.
Dollar for dollar, a B.A. is better
Grad studies are on the rise, but the payoff in cash is small
More Canadians are pursuing graduate studies than ever before. Even prior to the recession—university enrolments tend to spike during economic downturns—a significant shift was already under way: according to Statistics Canada, 32 per cent more people had master’s degrees in 2006 than in 2001, and 30 per cent more had doctorates. But, as a recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute shows, going to grad school doesn’t always pay.
While the desire to pad the mind, rather than the wallet, is what motivates many of those who get advanced degrees, it may still come as a surprise that a simple bachelor’s is a far more fruitful economic investment. According to “Extra Earning Power: The Financial Returns to University Education in Canada,” throughout their careers, men can expect an average annual return (after taxes) of 12 per cent on what they paid for tuition, books and living expenses in undergrad; for women, who have less lucrative opportunities with just a high school diploma, it’s 14 per cent. For master’s degrees, meanwhile, the annual rate of return drops to 2.9 per cent for men, and five per cent for women. The payback is smaller still for Ph.D.s: women can anticipate a 3.6 per cent return, while men actually emerge in the red.
As author François Vaillancourt explains, though grad school often unlocks added earning potential, due to “very high” costs of tuition, living expenses and income lost, master’s degrees and Ph.D.s don’t necessarily translate into bigger bank accounts. For society, the costs are even more significant. When men get master’s degrees, government, taxpayers and universities actually take a financial hit. But despite negligible and, in some cases, negative value to society, Vaillancourt points out that there’s more to determining worth than dollars and cents. “One thing we cannot measure is the content of work,” he says. However, in the case of degrees for which taxpayers, in the big scheme of things, seem to be carrying the load, he suggests, “Perhaps society should ask itself, ‘Why?’ ”
Privatize top 5 British universities, create “Ivy League”
“It is one of the few things we are world competitive in,” says UK university pres
The president of one of the UK’s leading universities, Imperial College London, has called on the government to privatize the country’s top five universities.
He suggested that these leading universities be able to charge unlimited tuition, to allow them to compete with and raise funds equivalent to those at the disposal of the leading US institutions. UK tuition is currently capped at around £3,000 per year — equivalent to approximately US$5,000 or C$5,500. That’s one-seventh the undergraduate tuition fee at leading US universities, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton. According to Sir Roy Anderson, head of Imperial College, London, the goal is to create a pool of universities that could compete with the US Ivy League. To give these British universities the tools to do so, Sir Roy proposes that tuition at the top 5 UK universities be allowed to “float free” of the government’s cap on tuition, effectively removing these universities from the UK’s publicly funded university system.
Though the Ivies charge very high tuition, the extra cash allows them to offer extensive financial aid to lower and middle income students.
The five universities Sir Roy singled out for privatization were Imperial College, Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and University College London. They are generally seen as the UK’s most prestigious institutions, and are highly ranked by such international surveys as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities. (There are some serious questions about the methodology of the second survey, but we’ll leave that discussion for another day).
Sir Roy told the Standard:
“How important is higher education to UK Plc? Staggeringly so. It is a multi-billion-pound industry. It is one of the few things we are world competitive in.
“If you take the top five universities, they have enormous potential to earn income for Britain. How best to do that? My own view would be to privatise them. You don’t want to be subject to the mores of government funding or changing educational structures.”
…
“Higher education is a product that Britain does superbly. Even if in 20 years’ time Imperial is a private institution able to compete with the Harvards and Yales, like them, I very much hope we would have the scholarship endowment to continue to take people from all walks of life.”
Sir Roy also condemned the Government for being preoccupied with dying industries such as car manufacturing.
Why every day is amateur hour in the House
Two-thirds of our MPs have a university degree, compared to 93 per cent in the U.S.
Apart from sex, the only realm of human achievement where ignorance and inexperience are widely seen as virtues is politics. Sarah Palin is only the most notorious recent example of the phenomenon; the “vote for me, I have no experience” gambit succeeds with remarkable frequency, which speaks volumes about public attitudes toward the political process and politicians. Politics is seen as a profession in the same sense that prostitution is, practised only by people of highly suspect moral character.
Canadian politicians are no exception, and the merits of this judgment are clearest in this country in the daily disgrace known as question period. To call question period a zoo would be an insult to the relative civility and good temperament of wild animals; one suspects that the occasional parleys between Bloods and Crips in South Central Los Angeles are less partisan and hostile affairs.
There is a tendency to chalk this behaviour up to an excess of familiarity among parliamentarians—the result of too many lifelong MPs going at it hammer and tongs day after day, year after year. The obvious analogue here is the famously entrenched U.S. Congress, which is highly professionalized and yet beset by partisanship and scandal.
Indeed, not so long ago there was a gnawing sense among some Ottawa observers that the incumbency rates in the Commons had reached levels dangerously comparable to those in the U.S. Congress.
And so in 2005, Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail wrote a sharp column lamenting the steep rise of MPs’ salaries under Jean Chrétien. Canadians, he argued, had become increasingly alienated from the political process, which they saw as the domain of “an increasingly self-perpetuating political class, or caste, with its own vocabulary, rituals, defence mechanisms and, in many instances, rather old ideas.”
Except a new study out this week from the Public Policy Forum suggests just the opposite. Bluntly stated, the report’s conclusions are that the House of Commons is so bad precisely because it is made up (mostly) of men who have little experience and education, lack any institutional memory of how Parliament ought to function, and are widely ignorant of the proper relationship between politicians and the bureaucracy.
The report’s figures are striking. One quarter of Canadian MPs are newly elected, while just over two-thirds have less than five years experience in the Commons and only three per cent have been serving their constituents for more than 15 years. There is a sharp contrast with U.S. and U.K. figures: two-thirds of the U.S. Congress have more than five years experience and over a quarter of representatives have more than 15 years experience; in Britain, two-thirds of parliamentarians have more than seven years experience, and a third have more than 11 years experience.
U.S. students go bargain shopping at Canuck universities
American media highlights value of our “colleges”
Canadian university recruiters south of the 49th parallel have been enjoying a good year with many Americans desperate to find more affordable higher education options than those presently available from private universities. This is especially true for Maritime universities who recruit in the Northeastern U.S.
The savings for American’s coming across the border are significant. A private American university can charge upwards of $40,000/yr, whereas a year at a Canadian university costs about $20,000. Factor in a favourable currency exchange, and the savings increase.
American media outlets have taken note of the trend and have provided invaluable positive coverage for Canadian institutions.
On Christmas Day, the Boston Globe published a lengthy story about the Canadian “college destination.”
Last week, NBC News aired a story on America’s most watched newscast about how affordable Canadian universities are in comparison to private US colleges:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Having talked to recruitment officials out east, there appears to be an increase in applications this year. It remains to be seen how many American students come north this fall. This could be a record year for Canadian universities.
Ontario enrolment crunch needs back-to-basics university
Report suggests undergrad-only and low-research university, “open” online school
To absorb an anticipated 25,000 new university students over the next 15 years, Ontario should considering creating new types of post-secondary institutions, including an undergraduates-only, low-research university and an “open” online university, according to the province’s advisory council on higher education.
In its Feb. 13 report, titled Degrees of Opportunity: Broadening Student Access by Increasing Institutional Differentiation in Ontario Higher Education, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario looks at the province’s various options for dealing with a massive influx of university students in the province.
The study concludes that the province’s higher education system could benefit from an “open university” that would allow students to combine credits from various institutions, as well as encouraging universities to open “satellite” campuses in the Greater Toronto Area.
The report, prepared by Glen Jones and Michael Skolnik, two professors at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, also recommends the province consider starting a new Toronto-based undergraduate university that would focus on arts and science, and suggests that community colleges be allowed to offer a larger range of degrees.
According to the authors, growing interest in post-secondary education, paired with an increase in new Canadians, has fuelled demand for more spots in universities and colleges in the province.
However, the report says Queen’s Park should avoid starting any full-service universities, designing a new breed of “polytechnic” institutions for higher-level technical learning, or letting community colleges offer the first two years of four-year university programs, which is common in Western Canada and the United States.
Iggy, that’s a great idea
Ignatieff’s excellent proposal: university funding should follow students across provincial borders
From the Halifax Chronicle Herald’s Q&A with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff:
Q: Post-secondary funding goes to where the student comes from rather than where the student goes to school. Would you change that if you had the chance?
A: I think we should. It won’t be easy because provinces from which the students originate will make a claim that it should stay with them. But I think we ought to encourage and reward the universities that actually attract students from out of province, and there’s a nation-building reason for that. It’s not merely (that) you want to reward Atlantic Canada for having good universities, but you also want to give Canadians, young Canadians, a national experience.
One of the things that builds a nation is, you know, if someone is born in Ontario, spends some time in Atlantic Canada, someone in Atlantic Canada spends some time out in Calgary. So we ought to have a financing system that incentivizes that, that encourages (us) to create a generation of Canadians that have national experience.
Provinces like Nova Scotia get the short end of the stick in the current system. The province has such a strong network of successful universities that it attracts thousands of students from across the country — but instead of that being a success story, it’s a budgetary problem for Nova Scotia. Why? Because when a B.C. student goes to school at St. Francis Xavier or Dalhousie, B.C.’s higher education tax dollars (and federal dollars transfered to BC) don’t follow that student. The government of Nova Scotia, a net importer of students, ends up footing the bill. As a result, Nova Scotia’s most successful industry—higher education—is a drain on the province’s budget and a perennial problem. The system’s upside down.
This idea of having funding follow university students has been around for decades. I was advocating it way back in the last century, when I was writing Globe and Mail editorials. But it’s never had a chance to grow tired. It’s never been tried.
Budget 2008: Millennium Foundation to be replaced
New Canada Student Grant Program addresses major criticism of Auditor-General: will mean same grants for students, but more transparency and accountability to Parliament.
A decade after it was created, the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation will be replaced by a new needs-based, non-repayable grant program to be called the Canada Student Grant Program.
The Conservative government says that, after a year-long review of student aid, it found the Foundation had limited success in encouraging more people to attend post-secondary education and did not provide students with predictable year-to-year funding. The new grant program will replace the Foundation which expires in 2009.
The Canada Student Grant Program will distributed according to income levels. Because the grants will be awarded each year of study, students will know how much to expect in support from year to year. The grants will range from approximately $250 per month for low income students to $100 per month for middle income students. 245,000 studens will benefit from the program each year.
Student groups were split on the issue. The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the second largest student lobby group in the country, was disappointed in the dissolution of the Foundation, but welcomed the dedication of its funding to a needs-based grant system.
“Today’s announcement marks the end of Canada’s tenure as one of the few western industrialised nations without a national system of grants,” said Amanda Aziz, chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. “It was long overdue.”
“We are cautiously optimistic about the delivery mechanism for the announced grant program and will move forward bearing the responsibility of ensuring that the Canada Student Grant Program is delivered in an efficient and transparent manner,” said David Simmonds, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance.
The new program will distribute $350 million in student aid when it begins in the fall of 2009. This amount will match the funds currently provided to students by the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Funding will increase by $80 million in 2012/13, to $430 million. This additional funding, which the government is describing as new, is above and beyond the current $138 million a year delivered by current federally-administrated grant programs such as Canada Access Grants and Canada Study Grants. The patchwork of federal grant programs will be integrated into the new grants program.
The government says the new grants problem will address concerns about the operation of the Scholarship Foundation.
“The new Canada Student Loans Program is just a rebrand of a Liberal program,” said Liberal post-secondary critic Mike Savage. “The last time they rebranded a program was with the Canada Summer Jobs program. Their rebrand was a disaster and they restored the Liberal program. We hope history doesn’t repeat itself.”
In the budget speech, Flaherty was critical of the Foundation, saying it “had limited success in encouraging more people to go to college or university, and did not provide students with predictable funding from one year to the next.”
The Auditor General has criticized the Foundation model for lacking the same accountability provisions as government department due to their “third-party” status. The government says that the new program, administered by Human Resources and Social Development, will be more transparent.
When created, the Foundation was seen as by some provinces as an intrusion into the provincial jurisdiction of education. The administration of the Foundation required that agreements between the provinces and Foundation be negotiated. Disputes resulted which resulted in delays in getting aid to students. The new grant program will be administered using the current federal student-aid framework. Provinces that do not participate in the Canada Student Loans Program will receive equivalent funding to administer their own needs-based program.
In order to receive the new grants, students will be required to apply for student loan. If they received a loan, they will automatically be considered for the new grant. Low-income students will receive $2,000 for a eight-month school term and middle-income students will receive $800. The grant will be provided up-front to students.
The grants will be guaranteed for all years of an undergraduate or college program. The government hopes by providing the grants up-front and guaranteeing them for the length of a students program that more low-income students will enter into a post-secondary program.
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations were also concerned that the research functions of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation would fall through the cracks. “The Foundation was the only group that was doing research on access issues. Looking at Aboriginal students, low income students, and first generation students,” said Zack Churchill, national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. “We haven’t seen any indication from the government that the federal research will be picked up.”
The government says it will ensure that students receiving Foundation bursaries in 2008-09 will be unaffected by the wind-down of the Foundation.
Our 17th Annual University Rankings
Maclean’s evaluation of overall academic excellence at universities across the country
With this year’s ranking, Maclean’s continues the mandate it established 16 years ago: to provide basic, essential information in a comprehensive package to help students choose the university that best suits their needs. The annual rankings assess Canadian universities on a diverse range of factors, from spending on student services and scholarships and bursaries, to funding for libraries and faculty success in obtaining national research grants. Maclean’s surveys universities with a focus on the undergraduate experience, and an intent to offer an overview of the quality of instruction and services available to students at public universities across the country.
For Medical Doctoral university rankings, right-click here, and open in new tab.
For Comprehensive university rankings, right-click here, and open in new tab.
For Primarily Undergraduate university rankings, right-click here, and open in new tab.
Maclean’s places universities in one of three categories, recognizing the differences in types of institutions, levels of research funding, the diversity of offerings, and the range of graduate and professional programs. Primarily Undergraduate universities are largely focused on undergraduate education, with relatively few graduate programs. Those in the Comprehensive category have a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees. Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and research. In addition, all universities in this category have medical schools, which sets them apart in terms of the size of research grants.
In each category, Maclean’s ranks the institutions on a range of factors—or performance indicators—in six broad areas (weightings are in parentheses). Primarily Undergraduate and Comprehensive universities are ranked on 13 performance measures; Medical Doctoral universities are ranked on 14. Figures include data from all federated and affiliated institutions. The magazine does not rank schools with fewer than 1,000 full-time students or those that are restrictive due to a religious or specialized mission.
The ranking process begins in the spring when thousands of reputational surveys are sent to university officials, high-school principals and guidance counsellors, heads of organizations, CEOs and corporate recruiters across the country, asking for their views on quality and innovation at Canadian universities. During the course of the summer, Maclean’s collects information on dozens of student and faculty awards from 45 administering agencies.
This year, Maclean’s revised its methodology, and the rankings are now based entirely on publicly available data. Student and faculty numbers were obtained from Statistics Canada, as was data for all five financial indicators— operating budget, spending on student services, scholarships and bursaries, library expenses and acquisitions—as well as total research income. For the social sciences and humanities research grants indicator and the medical/science research grants indicator, data for fiscal year 2006-2007 was received directly from the three major federal granting agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries and its regional counterparts provided figures used for the library holdings indicators. All financial and library figures are for the fiscal year 2005-2006; student and faculty numbers are for 2004-2005.
