The decision by 22 Canadian universities to opt out of the Maclean’s university ranking survey didn’t hurt the rankings said Tony Keller, managing editor of special projects.
“I think the fundamental goal was to try to put Maclean’s out of business, and they didn’t succeed,” he said. Queen’s was rated second in this year’s medical-doctoral category.
Despite the improvement in the University’s rating from fifth to second, Principal Karen Hitchcock said she doesn’t regret the University’s decision to drop out of the survey.
“I still think we should have pulled out. Again, the methodology is still flawed,” she said. “Of course I was pleased with the ranking of Queen’s within the medicaldoctoral category and many of the other rankings as well.” Keller said Maclean’s used the latest data they could obtain for the ranking. “There is no better or more up-to-date data that exists than what we published,” he said, adding that much of he information was accessible through other sources. But Keller said to post some information from the schools who refused to participate, Maclean’s had to rely on data from past years.
“This is information that has always been made public. This is information you can get through Freedom of Information laws,” Keller said. “I’m not saying the universities should be forced to create special data packages for Maclean’s … It’s simply that this is very basic information that the public eeds to have access to.”
–With files from Emily Gilbert and Anna Mehler Paperny
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