All Posts Tagged With: "Rankings"

How your still-developing brain puts you at risk

Illustration by Ian Phillips and Taylor Shute.

From the 21st Maclean’s University Rankings—on sale now.

Heading off to university is a time-worn rite of passage, one that marks the transition from teen years to adulthood. Despite the new relationships, responsibilities and independence that come with leaving home, however, in our late teens and early twenties, we’re still not fully mature. Our brains keep developing well into these years.

When puberty hits, brain regions responsible for reward and pleasure kick into high gear, according to Temple University psychology professor Laurence Steinberg, author of You and Your Adolescent. But other regions, involved in decision-making and impulse control, are slower to develop—and don’t mature until our mid-twenties. “The accelerator is activated before there’s a good braking system in place,” he says. Teens in mid-to-late adolescence are prone to risky decisions, seeking rewards without weighing the consequences. Starting a new life on campus, these brain changes affect students’ lives in all sorts of ways—maybe pushing them to stay out drinking all night, sign up for a semester abroad in Europe, sleep right through class, or ask their crush out on a date.

Continue reading What’s on your mind?

McGill, Simon Fraser and Mount Allison on top again in 2011

For the seventh year in a row, McGill University is ranked first in the Medical Doctoral category in the Maclean’s University Rankings, once again beating one-time king, the University of Toronto. Toronto, second again this year, has placed first in the category 12 times over the past 21 years. In third is the University of British Columbia. Queen’s is fourth. The University of Alberta is fifth.

So what’s given McGill such an edge? For one thing, McGill’s students win more national awards than Toronto’s. Another big factor is its student-faculty ratio. Toronto places dead last in the category (15), while McGill is fifth. On top of that, McGill dedicates more of its budget to scholarships and bursaries than any other school in the category. Toronto’s big advantage is its library collections—U of T trounces McGill in all four library-related categories. In the annual reputational survey, McGill has a slight edge too, achieving first place once again. But Toronto is catching up, having improved two positions since last year, from fourth to second. Two other Medical Doctoral universities improved by two spots on the reputational survey: Dalhousie University and the University of Sherbrooke.

In the Comprehensive Category, Simon Fraser University (1), the University of Victoria (2), the University of Waterloo (3), the University of Guelph (4), and Memorial University (5) all maintain their top-five positions. The biggest news in this category is that Brock University, Wilfrid Laurier University and Ryerson University all make their debuts, albeit in the bottom half. The three schools were moved into the Comprehensive category this year after recognizing both growth in their populations and increased graduate school offerings. Laurier has the highest debut—eleventh—on the strength of its reputation (7), faculty awards (5) and medical/science grants (4). In the reputational survey, Waterloo placed first among Comprehensive schools—as it does most years—while Simon Fraser, Guelph, Victoria and Ryerson rounded-out the top five.

In the Primarily Undergraduate category, the University of Prince Edward Island showed the biggest change, thanks in part to a strong showing in student awards, vaulting past Trent, St. Francis Xavier and Bishop’s to tie for fourth place with Lethbridge. It is bested only by Mount Allison University, Acadia University and the University of Northern British Columbia, which came first, second and third, respectively, in 2011. Mount A’s achievement is particularly impressive: it’s the fifteenth time that the Sackville, N.B. school has taken the top honour—a record number of wins. The University of Moncton also deserves commendation. Moncton moved up to fifteenth position, with the strongest showing on student/faculty ratio and an improved score on the reputational survey.

Maclean’s considers 14 numerical indicators of the quality of students, faculty, libraries and finances to rank 49 universities. Each is placed in one of three categories to recognize differences in levels of research funding, offerings, and the range of graduate programs. This year, three schools (Ryerson, Laurier and Brock) were moved into the Comprehensive category. For our complete 21st annual rankings, plus Canada’s best higher education journalism, pick up your copy of the 2011 Maclean’s University Rankings issue on newsstands Oct. 27. Here are the results:

Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and have medical schools.

* Indicates a tie

Comprehensive universities have a significant degree of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees.

* Indicates a tie

Primarily Undergraduate universities are largely focused on undergraduate education with relatively fewer graduate programs and graduate students.

* Indicates a tie

Want to know more about how we rank? Read Measuring excellence.

From the 2011 Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue

Are a law school’s professors significant contributors to the intellectual life of their discipline? Do a law school’s graduates land the most sought-after jobs in government, the private sector and academia? These are the two questions Maclean’s annual law survey seeks to answer.

All of the data used in the Maclean’s law rankings are publicly available. All focus on law school outputs. Fifty per cent of the overall ranking is determined by faculty quality, and 50 per cent by graduate quality.

The four measures of graduate quality look at the success each law school has had producing graduates able to land the most competitive jobs. The indicators are:

Elite Firm Hiring: Maclean’s calculated how many of each school’s graduates are serving as associates at law firms on Lexpert’s list of the largest firms in Canada across all regions, or at one of the five leading New York firms, according to the employment website Vault. This was done by examining the online biographies of thousands of lawyers at dozens of law firms. To scale this measure to each school, the tally was divided by first-year class size, averaged over the past three years. This measure is worth 20 per cent.

National Reach: This indicator, based on the Elite Firm Hiring measure, is worth 10 per cent. It measures the proportion of each law school’s grads at leading firms who are working at firms other than the three that hired the most grads from this school. It’s a measure of the extent to which leading firms outside a school’s region hire its graduates.

Supreme Court Clerkships: A measure of how many of a school’s graduates have served as clerks at the Supreme Court of Canada, this indicator is worth 10 per cent. There are 27 clerks each year; it is one of the most competitive positions open to graduates. Maclean’s looked at the last six years’ worth of clerks. As with the other measures of graduate quality, the tally was divided by each school’s average first-year enrolment.

Faculty Hiring: Worth 10 per cent, this indicator looks at how many of a school’s graduates are professors at Canadian law schools, with extra weight given to grads hired by faculties other than their alma mater.

Faculty Journal Citations: In this measure of faculty quality, worth 50 per cent, Maclean’s employed the HeinOnline database of legal periodicals. The search included citations in international publications as well as Canadian journals in order to reflect the reality of a globalized academy. The number of citations recorded by each faculty member was measured; the tally for each school was then divided by the size of its faculty.

The methodology behind the Maclean’s law school rankings was created in co-operation with professor Brian Leiter, director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago. The data were compiled by researcher Jane Bao. Ranking on each indicator and overall rank was determined using the statistical percentile method that Maclean’s has long employed in our annual university rankings. Our statistician was Hong Chen, of McDougall Scientific Ltd. statistical consultants.

Three schools make Forbes’ Top 12 ranking

Schulich at York courtesy of Elango on Flickr

Each year, business magazine Forbes ranks international M.B.A. programs based one single statistic: the return on investment realized five years after graduation. They call this the “5-year M.B.A. gain.” Three Canadian schools round out this year’s Top 12 Non-U.S. M.B.A. Programs:

10. York (Schulich)
The class of 2006 started with an average salary of $36,000 and were earning $121,000 by 2010.
Less tuition, fees and forgone compensation, the “5-year M.B.A. gain” is $47,000.

11. McGill (Desautels)
The class of 2006 started with an average salary of $43,000 and were earning $134,000 by 2010.
Less tuition, fees and forgone compensation, the “5-year M.B.A. gain” is $40,000.

12. UBC (Sauder)
The class of 2006 started with an average salary of $31,000 and were earning $92,000 by 2010.
Less tuition, fees and forgone compensation, the “5-year M.B.A. gain” is $21,000.

To see a comprehensive list of Canadian M.B.A. programs and how they compare, buy the Canadian Business M.B.A. Guide. All figures above are in U.S. dollars.

Is your school on the list?

Want to know how colleges are doing? Just look at the “Key Performance Data” that the Ontario government makes colleges and universities publish each year. The information is based, in part, on surveys that students complete six months after graduation.

The new 2010 figures suggest colleges are better than they were in 2005. The graduation rate is up from 60 per cent 64 per cent. Employer satisfaction — always high — nudged up from 92 per cent to 93 per cent. Graduate satisfaction also inched its way from from 78 per cent to 79 per cent. The only notable decline was in the employment rate six months after graduation, which slipped from 89 per cent to 83 per cent.

The numbers also show a big range in student satisfaction, so we thought we’d share some details. Of the 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, these 10 had the most graduates who answered that they were “very satisfied” with their college experience when asked six months after graduation in 2010.

1. St. Lawrence – 85 per cent

2. Sault – 85 per cent

3. Northern – 84 per cent

4. St. Clair – 84 per cent

5. Georgian – 83 per cent

6. Confederation – 82 per cent

7. Collège Boréal – 82 per cent

8. Cambrian – 82 per cent

9. La Cité collégiale – 82 per cent

10. Conestoga – 81 per cent

Many Canadian schools are in the Top 100, but some don’t even rank.

The University of Toronto, seen here, is near the top of the pack in all categories of the QS Rankings.

The QS World University Rankings for Arts and Humanities faculties have been released. (QS is a large global firm that has ranked schools for two decades.) As expected, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge claim the top three spots for nearly every faculty. But, perhaps surprisingly, one Canadian school — The University of Toronto — consistently ranks in the top 10, often above Ivy League schools like Princeton and Yale. McGill University and The University of British Columbia are the only other two Canadian universities that consistently fall in the top 50. In fact, they fall in the top 20 for most programs.

Beyond that, things get particularly interesting. Queen’s is the fourth-place Canadian school in nearly every category, while laid-back Simon Fraser University, embattled York University, McMaster University and the University of Alberta are the only others with multiple top 100 showings.

Unfortunately, there are many great Canadian schools missing altogether, most of which are small liberal arts oases in eastern Canada, like Acadia and St. Francis Xavier. That suggests that a one-size-fits-all ranking can’t capture the benefits of smaller schools, like smaller class sizes and faculty interaction. The Maclean’s University Rankings (released in the fall) overcome this problem by separating schools into three categories based on size and research-intensity. Still, the QS Rankings show how outside observers rate our schools. Here is a complete list of where Canadian schools rank in the QS World Arts and Humanities Rankings for 2011.

English

#7. Toronto

#12. McGill

#13. British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s, Montreal, Alberta, York

#101-150. Concordia, Simon Fraser, Calgary, Waterloo, Western

#151-200. Brock, Carleton, McMaster

Modern Languages

#9. Toronto

#15. McGill

#22. British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s, Montreal, Alberta, Calgary, York

#101-150. Carleton, Concordia

History

#11. Toronto

#15. McGill

#21. British Columbia

#51-100. Queen’s, Simon Fraser, Montreal, Alberta, Western, York

#101-150. Laval

Philosophy

#7. Toronto

#16. British Columbia

#18. McGill

#51-100. Queen’s, Montreal, Quebec, Alberta, Western

#101-150. McMaster, Calgary, Ottawa, Victoria, Waterloo, York

#151-200. Carleton, Ryerson, Guelph

Geography

#14. British Columbia

#16. Toronto

#17. McGill

#51-100. McMaster, Queen’s

#100-150. Simon Fraser, Montreal, Alberta, Victoria, York

#151-200. Carleton, Laval, Calgary, Waterloo, Western

Linguistics

#9. McGill

#11. Toronto

#24. British Columbia

#51-100. Simon Fraser, Ottawa, York

Looking for QS World Science Rankings? Here’s a list of where Canadian faculties ranked in their May release.

Students tell universities how the system is working. It’s all about class time.

Teaching often comes second at universities—quite literally. Professors are expected to spend only 40 per cent of their time in the classroom, consulting with students, and marking their work. The rest is spent on research and other duties. The research-intensive university produces world-class discoveries to be sure, but it also produces grumbling undergraduates. The results of this year’s student satisfaction surveys couldn’t show this more clearly. The research-intensive universities for the most part do not perform as well on these student surveys.

Schools that dare to focus on teaching have risen to the top of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Professors at teaching-focused universities like Quest, Trinity Western and King’s at Western are free to spend a majority of their time engaging with students in the classroom, the office or beyond. Considering the fact that a recent study from the University of Alberta found that the average professor is already working 56 hours per week, it’s difficult to expect them to do more. The only way they can spend more time with students is to de-emphasize research. And not all researchers make good teachers. Teaching-focused schools focus on pedagogy in the job interview, says David Sylvester, principal of King’s at Western. It’s certainly paying off for his school. Six in 10 senior-year students say they would definitely go back to King’s if they were allowed to start over, the NSSE survey found. That’s compared to only 45 per cent of students overall, and only 21 per cent of senior-year students from the University of Ottawa.

Continue reading 2011 Student Surveys: Complete results

Compromising a professor’s freedom to assign marks should not be taken lightly.

This past week, a professor contacted us here at OnCampus, indicating that he was being treated unfairly by his administration which had forced him to lower grades in his courses, claiming (wrongly, he said) that the grades were inflated. Others with more journalistic chops than me are looking into the specifics of his case, but the message raised an issue that is too often ignored  in our discussions of Canadian higher education.

When, if ever, should a university interfere with a professor’s grades?

Someone more high-minded and idealistic than me (if that’s possible), might argue the answer to that question should be never. A professor has the right to academic freedom, and that freedom extends to teaching, and teaching includes grading. If the professor is a qualified expert in his field, we should leave him to his judgements. It’s not for an administrator to come along after the fact and second-guess whether the grades are fair or not. Nor should that administrator pre-second-guess by insisting that the professor’s grades fall within a certain arbitrary range.

Academic freedom is an important principle — maybe the most important in the university — but it is not the only principle, and policing grades (like policing people) often means balancing one important principle against another. For instance, surely we can agree on the principle that students should be treated fairly, right? But what if students in Professor Curmudgeon’s Intro to Psych class are getting mostly Cs and Ds while students of similar ability and motivation are getting As and Bs over in Professor Candycorn’s section? In other words, if two students are doing work of about the same quality, shouldn’t they be getting about the same grade?

Of course they should, but everyone who has taught at a real university knows that this is not the case. An essay that would earn you an A in Dr Paddington’s class may only tip the scales as a B in Dr Saltmarsh’s section. I once had a colleague who gave a paper a grade in the 40s and when the student complained, gave the paper to two other colleagues in the same department to see what they would have given. One said the original grade was too generous and that something in the 30s was deserved; the other said the original evaluation had been much too harsh and the paper was worth a 70. In my department, the average grades between one section of Intro to Lit and another often vary by 15 points or more.

With all this in mind, wouldn’t it make sense for the university to issue guidelines (especially for multiple sections of the same course) that say the average final grades ought to be within x and y?

Sure, but like student assignments or political revolutions, the basic idea is great, but the execution is troubling.

For one thing, how does one agree on the correct range for the grades? If Professor Gatekeeper has a class average in the 50s, and Professor Flowers has a class average in the 70s, the former will likely think that the latter is too lenient and should be brought to heel, while the latter probably thinks the former is an old sourpuss and should be made to lighten up.  Gatekeeper thinks his grades are low because he has courageously high standards, while Flowers thinks her students do better because she is such a good teacher. Even averaging everyone’s grades to get a fair range might not  help because Gatekeeper thinks all his colleagues have gone soft, while Flowers thinks that she’s the only one who gets it. And what about the fact that some courses are harder than others? Do we need to have one range for Geology and another for Organic Chemistry? One for Intro to Cinema and another for Shakespeare? And how do we decide those ranges?

And even if we could agree on a range, another problem crops up. What if you genuinely have an unusually good class? In large intro courses with many sections, this becomes statistically less likely, though, even then, there might be factors that lead some sections to have better students than others (maybe the students in one particularly demanding program can only take the course in one particular time slot, so that slot gets a lot of top students). I once had an upper-year drama course where the average was nearly 80 and though I feared I was losing my edge, I was pretty sure then and am absolutely sure now that that was just an unusually smart and motivated group of students.

All that said, there must surely be cases where administrators must step in. I recall a case where an instructor routinely gave virtually all the students in all his courses 90 or higher. Needless to say, students flocked to his classes, and needless to say, not all of them were earning those A+ grades. Some of them probably didn’t even deserve credit in the courses, and some of them might have been given an unfair advantage when competing for scholarships and prizes. Others might have used the easy 90 to raise their overall average and thus be eligible to graduate when they otherwise would not have been. At a certain point, doling out top marks indiscriminately is not exercising one’s academic freedom; it is shirking one’s academic responsibilities.

One way to improve things would be to include rankings on students’ transcripts in addition to the grade. That is, your transcript could say that you got an 80 in Professor Middleton’s class, and also indicate that that was, say, the fifth highest grade out of thirty students. Including such information is frowned upon by registrars in Canada and is rarely done, but the obvious benefit is that it would instantly provide a clearer picture of what the grade really means. For instance, let’s say Lindsay and Megan both get 85 in different sections Intro to Poli Sci. But look closer and you see that Lindsay was ranked first in her class of thirty, while Megan was ranked tenth in her class of the same size. In all likelihood, Lindsay did much better because her professor was a tougher grader than Megan’s. Lindsay’s 85 is worth more than Megan’s in the same way that one country’s dollar might be worth more than another’s.

Rankings wouldn’t solve all the problems –  the top ten students, for example, in one class might all be very close in terms of their grades, making the tenth place student look worse than she deserves — but the rankings would help. Bragging rights would go to those who did the best in their classes, not who earned an arbitrary number or letter. I doubt it will catch on, though. When I proposed adding rankings to transcripts at my university, the proposal was shot down, partly on the grounds that knowing where they were ranked might hurt students’ feelings.

Universities have an obligation to police grades when the grading is so out of kilter that it threatens the integrity of the school’s offerings. In general, administrators should be more concerned with grades that are too high than grades that are too low because numerous pressures conspire to inflate grades, and low grades can always be appealed. Still, any system to regulate grades must be done with enough flexibility  to allow for special cases in particular and academic freedom in general. After all, I can’t ask a journalist to look into every case, now can I?

Maclean’s has spent 20 years gathering the best numerical data to compare the quality of Canadian schools. It isn’t easy. Here’s how we do it.

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 degree 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; as well, 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 performance indicators in six broad areas, allocating a weight to each indicator. 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, those that are restrictive due to a religious or specialized mission, newly designated universities or those that are not members of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).

The rankings are based on the most recent and publicly available data. Statistics Canada provides student and faculty numbers, as well as data for total research income and all five financial indicators: operating budget, spending on student services, scholarships and bursaries, library expenses and acquisitions. Financial figures are for fiscal year 2008-2009; student and faculty numbers are for 2008. Data for the social sciences and humanities research grants indicator and the medical/science research grants indicator are for fiscal year 2009-2010 and obtained directly from the three major federal granting agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The Canadian Association of Research Libraries provides figures used for the library holdings indicators; the numbers used for this year’s calculations are for 2008. In addition, Maclean’s collects information on dozens of student and faculty awards from 46 administering agencies, and sends more than 11,000 reputational surveys to university officials at each ranked institution, high school principals and guidance counsellors, CEOs, recruiters and the heads of a wide variety of national and regional organizations.

Maclean’s weights the rankings as follows:

STUDENTS & CLASSES (20 per cent of final score) Maclean’s collects data on the success of the student body at winning national academic awards (weighted 10 per cent) over the previous five years. The list covers 40 fellowship and prize programs, encompassing more than 18,000 individual awards from 2005 through 2009. The count includes such prestigious awards as the Rhodes scholarships and the Fulbright awards, as well as scholarships from professional associations and the three federal granting agencies. Each university’s total of student awards is divided by its number of full-time students, yielding a count of awards relative to each institution’s size.

To gauge students’ access to professors, Maclean’s also measures the number of full-time-equivalent students per full-time faculty member (10 per cent). This student-faculty ratio includes all students, graduate as well as undergraduate.

FACULTY (20 per cent) In assessing the calibre of faculty, Maclean’s calculates the number who have won major national awards over the past five years, including the distinguished Killam, Molson and Steacie prizes, the Royal Society of Canada awards, the 3M Teaching Fellowships and nearly 40 other award programs covering a total of 848 individual awards (eight per cent). To scale for institution size, the award count for each university is divided by each school’s number of full-time faculty.

In addition, the magazine measures the success of faculty in securing research grants from SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR. Maclean’s takes into account both the number and the dollar value received in the previous year, and divides the totals by each institution’s full-time faculty count. Research grants are reported by how many are awarded to the primary investigator on a project. Social sciences and humanities grants (six per cent) and medical/science grants (six per cent) are tallied as separate indicators.

RESOURCES (12 per cent) This section examines the amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student (six per cent). Students are weighted according to their level of study—bachelor, master’s or doctorate—and their program of study.

To broaden the scope of the research picture, Maclean’s also measures total research dollars (six per cent). This figure, calculated relative to the size of each institution’s full-time faculty, includes income from sponsored research, such as grants and contracts, federal, provincial and foreign government funding, and funding from non-governmental organizations.

STUDENT SUPPORT (13 per cent) To evaluate the assistance available to students, Maclean’s examines the percentage of the budget spent on student services (6.5 per cent) as well as scholarships and bursaries (6.5 per cent). Expenditures are measured as they are reported to the Canadian Association of University Business Officers.

For 20 years, we have been bringing together parents, presidents, professors and prospective students in a conversation about education

Going to university is like standing on the edge of your life—one of many edges, we later discover. It’s an optimistic moment, especially if you believe Oscar Wilde when he said that the basis of optimism is sheer terror. Students have to figure out not only where to go, but more importantly and subtly, where they belong—the “goodness of fit,” as one of our experts described it. We parents have to stand aside (okay, not too far aside) and let them choose, negotiating our own desires and fears alongside theirs. We hand them off to their professors, who take on the daunting task of literally educating our darlings—roomfuls of ambitious, cocky, nerve-wracked kids—to become the very best and smartest versions of themselves. Meanwhile, we all look to the leaders of our universities, presidents from the University of Victoria to the University of Prince Edward Island, to navigate and define what it means to be an institution of higher learning in Canada in 2010. And while we’re on it, just what is the purpose of a university education today—to expand your mind? Get a job? All in all, it’s a lot to think about.

Which is where Maclean’s comes in. For 20 years, we have been bringing together parents, presidents, professors and prospective students in a conversation about education. This, the 20th anniversary issue of our university rankings, is our biggest and most ambitious edition ever. Our goal is not just to be the most valuable resource in the country—and we are that—but also to personalize the university decision by making it as easy as possible; everything you need to make up your mind is right here in one place. It’s not a cheap decision, either: a four-year degree in Canada now costs about $60,000. On the other hand, university graduates earn an average of 75 per cent more over their lifetime than non-graduates, and have a substantially higher employment rate. Not bad, as investments go.

The same might be said of the decision 20 years ago to launch Maclean’s first-ever rankings issue. “At the time, universities were the most closed, secretive public institutions in the country,” says former Maclean’s editor Kevin Doyle, who created the university rankings. “There was so little information available, parents and students had no idea how to go about selecting a university.

The first rankings, published in October 1991, stirred a public debate and began a process that had a revolutionary impact on the schools themselves, says Doyle, who recently retired as executive director of communications and public affairs at the University of Windsor. “Universities have changed because of this. They’ve come to treat students as clients to be sought after and cultivated.”

Sen. Linda Frum agrees. The subject of this week’s interview and the author of her own guide to universities in 1987, she recalls her university experience. “I attended McGill University in the early ’80s, a period when a hostile separatist government was starving the institution of funds. Back then, the suggestion that the school would one day be rescued by a $750-million fundraising campaign financed by Anglo alumni would have sounded fantastical. The idea of a McGill principal as governor general? Outright delusional. And yet both have happened. The once-battered university has returned gloriously to the centre of Canadian life”—and to the top of our rankings in their category for the sixth year in a row. In the same time period, the annual rankings issue has become Maclean’s most-anticipated single issue of the year and an important franchise in its own right. We like to think that Maclean’s had a role in the emergence of McGill and other universities across the country as leaders in the golden age of university education we now live in.

Which is an optimistic thought, isn’t it? There’s a lot of optimism in this issue, in fact, starting on the cover with the thousand-watt smile of Deanna Jarvis, a student at the University of Guelph. Being a mother myself, with a son in university and a daughter on her way, it’s the mother’s hopes expressed in this issue that I keep thinking about. Johanna Schneller, on the now-commonplace university road trip with her daughter Hayley, writes: “My eyes kept filling with tears, not because I’m hormonally challenged, but because the belief that one should dream as grandly as possible moved me.”

And then there’s Frum, who has nightly dinner-table conversations with her teenage twins about where they’ll choose: “I love my kids, like all moms love their kids, and I’m desperate for them to make the right choice. Although now I know that there are a lot of right choices. You can have a great time in a dozen different places. Even though you only get to choose one, it’s hard to get it spectacularly wrong.” The gleam of the future is in their eyes. Just look at Deanna.

Complete university issue and full Ranking results on newstands Nov 11, 2010.