dmdmd

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2004 - ISSUE 32, VOLUME 131 UBC and the Maclean’s university ranking
Did UBC reduce class sizes just to satisfy Maclean’s?
T O P   S T O R Y - By Steven Seligman, Features Co-Editor
A reserve communications officer awaits further instructions.

For many prospective university students, the Maclean’s magazine ranking provides a primary source of information about Canadian universities. Measuring performance indicators such as average class size, availability of bursaries and the number of tenured professors, the magazine strives to help undecided students make up their minds about their post-secondary plans.

Last year, Maclean’s ranked the University of British Columbia (UBC) fifth among universities in the category of medical doctoral universities. First place in that category went to the University of Toronto, followed by McGill, Queen’s and Western.

Three years ago, UBC ranked second. The National Post reported that increasing class size was a factor in UBC’s lowered ranking.

Recent developments at UBC suggest it is not complacent with its fifth place standing and is willing to improve its Maclean’s grade by taking measures that some are calling inappropriate.

Sarah Schmidt, writing for the CanWest News Service, has reported that senior administrators at UBC pressured several professors to limit the maximum number of students in certain classes in order to conform to the guidelines used by the Maclean’s ranking. Schmidt also reported that UBC moved several small classes from the second term to the first and moved several large classes from the first term to the second in order to better conform to Maclean’s ranking of class sizes. Maclean’s conducts its annual review of universities in the first term.

According to Schmidt, UBC linguistics professor Margery Fee sent a private e-mail to the psychology department head in which she suggested it may be useful for the department to restructure some of its classes in order to better conform to the Maclean’s ranking.

“I have discovered that Maclean’s only looks at term one,” Fee wrote. “On reviewing your term one classes, I see a few that might be massaged in order to accrue points, provided this works for you.”

Schmidt also reported that Fee, in a different e-mail, wrote to the linguistics department head and suggested UBC might receive a higher Maclean’s ranking if the university reduced the maximum number of students permitted in certain classes.

“I realize that you have mapped course capacity to room capacity, but now we are being asked to respect Maclean’s breakpoints in term one, rather than fill classrooms to capacity,” Fee wrote. “I realize by capping these courses, we are, in effect, controlling the number of majors in linguistics, which may not be a good thing.”

UBC president Heather Piper denies the University reduced class sizes for no reason other than to conform to the Maclean’s ranking.

“We’ve always been focused on class size and will continue to focus on class size,” she told The National Post. “If you suggest the only reason we’re doing it is because of the Maclean’s ranking, I would really categorically deny that.”

Queen’s also does not make decisions based on the Maclean’s ranking, said Richard Seres, director of the marketing and communications office of advancement.

“Decisions at Queen’s ... aren’t made on how we’re going to do on a survey,” Seres said. “They’re being made on what’s best for the University, what’s best for the students, what’s best for the learning environment that we’ve got here. It’s not about any survey.”

Seres said every university values the Maclean’s ranking and the survey is a useful source of information about Canadian universities.

“There’s no doubt that every single university pays attention to Maclean’s,” Seres said. “I think you’re foolish not to.”

Seres said the events at UBC are interesting because they highlight a much larger problem that exists everywhere, not just at UBC.

“There’s a bigger issue at play in higher education,” he said. “The bigger issue is the money that’s available for higher education. That creates a lot of pressure on the universities.”

Seres said problems relating to a lack of adequate funding are more important now than in the past and are not unique to Queen’s or any one Canadian university.

“At Queen’s, we had much lower student/faculty ratios years ago because funding was there,” Seres said. “At any other Ontario or Canadian university, funding is not there now.”

Few would deny that Canadian universities could use more funding, although there is legitimate disagreement over what is the best way to obtain the additional funds. Since coming to Queen’s Park, the Ontario Liberals have frozen post-secondary tuition but have not increased public funding of universities, which could exacerbate the current funding problem. If the events at UBC are any indication, it seems some universities may be taking increasingly drastic measures to remedy the situation.



—With files from the Can West News Service, Maclean’s magazine and The National Post

Photo by Andrew Norman