Tale of the tape

By Tony Keller - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - 11 Comments

Canada’s universities play on a world stage, but often fall short

Tale of the tape Each November, for more than a decade and a half, Maclean’s has published its special issue ranking Canadian universities, comparing them on attributes such as resources, research, reputation and student and faculty quality. This exercise is, however, a purely made-in-Canada affair. We look at how McGill stacks up against the University of British Columbia and where Waterloo sits relative to Simon Fraser; we don’t ask how they compare with Stanford, Oxford or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. But what if we did? What if we asked that favourite Canadian question: how are we doing? How do our universities compare to those in the rest of the world?

• Access: Canadians are arguably the most educated people on earth. Or at least the most schooled. Forty-seven per cent of working-age Canadians have a post-secondary credential, meaning university or college. That’s higher than any other developed country: the U.S. figure is just 39 per cent. What’s more, the number of Canadians with higher education is steadily rising. Fifty-five per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 34 attended university or college, compared to fewer than four out of 10 Canadians aged 55 to 64. Score one for Canadian higher ed. Continue…

Can higher ed reach higher?

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 48 Comments

Canada’s leading universities want to, writes Paul Wells, but big dreams call for big changes

There’s a paradox to being the president of a large Canadian university: on most days you get to feel more influential and more powerless than most people can imagine.

In next week’s Maclean’s, we’ll talk with the presidents of Canada’s five largest universities about the challenges they face, and what they think needs fixing in our university system. It’s first worth examining, however, just how big a footprint these five make in Canada, and how Canadian universities in general stack up internationally. The institutions in question—the University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, University of Toronto, McGill University, and the Université de Montréal—are an elite bunch. They have nearly 22 per cent of Canada’s undergraduate student enrolment and produce nearly 45 per cent of the country’s doctorates. Continue…
Need guidance? Get The Guide

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 12:08 PM - 0 Comments

The encyclopedia of higher ed — Maclean’s Guide to Universities

If you’re here, you’re thinking about university or college. Or perhaps someone you know is planning on going; maybe a child or grandchild. Every year, several hundred thousand Canadians find themselves in the same place, asking the same questions. You are probably bursting with excitement at all the possibilities, while simultaneously overwhelmed by uncertainty about your journey and its destination. I can relate. I was there. So was everyone I know.

For more than a decade, Canadians have been turning to the Maclean’s Guide to Canadian Universities to help them make a higher education decision. This edition, our 14th annual, is one-third larger than last year’s, offering more advice, more insights and more information than ever. Think of it as your encyclopedia of all things university. The 256 page Guide includes:

Profiles of 68 Canadian universities: The Guide’s in-depth profiles give you a sense of the look, feel and history of each university, along with the programs offered. Each school’s Campus Confidential section reveals what students say they like—and dislike—about their university.

Student Finance 101: This section, new to the Guide in 2009, answers some essential questions: How much will school cost? How am I going to pay for it? We reveal the cost of tuition, fees, rent and residence rooms at Canada’s universities; show how the average student earns money and makes ends meet; and offer advice on navigating the student loans system.

Foreign students: Are you hoping to study in Canada? There’s a section of advice especially for you.

Scholarships: Looking for money for school? There are so many scholarships out there, often open to even average students. There Guide includes a directory of more than 2,300 university entrance scholarships, worth more than $65 million.

Rankings: Each year, we rank 47 Canadian universities according to more than a dozen criteria of excellence.

Reputational survey: As part of the annual rankings, we solicit the opinions of several thousand people in a position to know something about the quality of universities and their graduates: university officials, high school guidance counsellors and principals from every province, the heads of national and regional organizations, plus corporate recruiters and CEOs.

Student surveys: Why not ask people who know the most about the university: students? The Guide includes results from two national surveys of student satisfaction and educational quality, involving feedback from tens of thousands of Canadian university students. Where are university students most satisfied? How do universities compare in terms of educational best-practices? And how do Canada’s universities stack up against their American peers?

The Guide is available in printed or electronic form. Want to see more? Click here.
Student power!

By Anne Kingston - Monday, December 15, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 6 Comments

How Carleton council members made such a botch of things

Procedural breakdown. A government tone-deaf to its public. Demonstrations by a usually apathetic electorate. Calls for the leader’s ouster. It’s a familiar theme in Ottawa lately, both on Parliament Hill and up the Rideau at Carleton University where its student association, CUSA, sparked a national furor in late November by dropping Shinerama, its annual frosh week fundraiser for cystic fibrosis, in search of a more “broad reaching” charity.

Media was alerted to the vote by Nick Bergamini, a third-year journalism student who was the only council member present to oppose the motion. He was savvy enough to know the press would seize on the false claim that cystic fibrosis “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men,” presented to buttress the assertion that orientation volunteers “should feel like their fundraising efforts serve their diverse communities.”

Continue…