Maclean’s Rankings: Maybe the Problem is our Universities

Tessa Vanderhart, Staff

Every year, the Maclean’s university rankings are bad news for the University of Manitoba; two years of the lowest possible ranking in the medical/doctoral category, fifteenth out of fifteen, only opens the university to criticism.

In fact, the U of M does so poorly that anyone who didn’t know better would assume that the university needs improvement. Instead, however, the university silently and effectively dismisses the rankings.

It is clear that there are problems with the ranking system; it is clear that there are problems with the way post-secondary education is funded in this country. This is hardly noteworthy. But what seems impossible to grasp in all of this is that universities, too, might have a stake in the so-called funding crisis.

Fair or flawed?

There are indeed flaws in the Maclean’s design, but this is not the whole story. To imply that the flaws are more relevant than the rankings is simply petty and nothing more than an exercise in futility — ignore them if you will, but the problems will not simply go away.

The U of M is a provincial institution; it is mandated to accept students from diverse backgrounds, often with lower entrance marks or mature student status. As such, there is some merit to the argument the rankings are unfairly skewed to more prestigious universities.

But, despite what the study would have you believe, universities are on a fairly level playing field; small deviations in the data mean that the numbers crunched have very little relevance outside of the Maclean’s rankings. That said, despite the arbitrary nature of these rankings, some important conclusions can be taken from them, for better or for worse.

Importantly, the rankings show that all prairie universities have low retention rates. The U of M is a case in point. While many students may start out here, Maclean’s notes that students are uncommonly willing to leave, as the U of M has the second lowest rate of retention among medical/doctoral universities.

These flaws do not, however, invalidate the entire scale of the rankings, nor the system by which universities are assessed. Quite simply, there is more to the rankings than these obvious flaws, and there is some substance in the rankings that must be duly noted. Low entrance grades for the U of M tell only one part of the story. Bottom rankings in research grants, scholarships, library acquisitions, and reputation tell the rest. Even if the stats are irrelevant, that is a lot to ignore.

Money, Money, Money . . . .

Finances — or the lack thereof — inevitably frame any discussion of post-secondary education in Canada. No one denies that universities are underfunded. But the Maclean’s study, year in and year out, profiles the best universities while parading the flaws of the worst.

In all of this, what is never mentioned is the money. Money, easily the most important predictor of quality in post-secondary education, is not a determining factor in the Maclean’s rankings at all — or so follows the predictable argument against them.

Yes, the Maclean’s system is flawed, and yes, the University of Toronto, with its $1.1 billion operating budget, ranks first overall.

However, the same flawed system is applied to McGill University. With the lowest tuition in Canada, and half the operating budget of the U of T, McGill is tied for first, marking the first time in ten years of rankings that a university has managed to touch the U of T.

These universities receive just as much funding from the federal government as do “provincial” universities like the U of M. Just because Maclean’s insists on ranking our schools does not mean that the federal government allocates money according to the rankings.

Even if this was the case, in Saskatchewan — where the U of S ranks eleventh — a complete review of post-secondary education is being conducted. Despite outward parallels with Manitoba, including a funding predicament, the University of Saskatchewan attracts more students with averages above 95 per cent than any other university in Canada.

Thus, it matters less how much money is put into post-secondary education than what is done with the money.

And what of Manitoba?

It could be argued that Manitoba is a have-not province, that the responsibility falls to the provincial government to bail us out year after year. And they do. Manitoba universities are adequately funded, if only at the last minute.

Take, for example, the University of Winnipeg. They, like the U of M, faced a funding crunch this spring. They too had to negotiate with the provincial government. Yet the differences between the two universities, in terms of what has been done with this last-minute money, are almost impossible to reconcile.

The U of W approached the provincial government and asked for $3 million to improve technology and infrastructure. A few days later, a cheque was in the mail; a few months later, there are real improvements — security initiatives, a laptop program, a wireless corridor and a new Student Information System among them. With tangible improvements such as these, it is easy to see why the U of W continues to rank well.

The U of M, on the other hand, demanded the same treatment, for the same reasons as the U of W — to fund technological innovation. Without an additional $7 million, the U of M would have been unable to pay professors and consequently have been forced into debt, something forbidden by the University of Manitoba Act.

The government found money, happily for the U of W, and grudgingly for the U of M. It’s bad enough that the U of M ranks last in public perception — demanding more money to avoid debt, and then covering it up with promises to improve technology does little to improve our image.

So the Maclean’s approach is flawed. So what? It is no more, and no less flawed than the system by which we attempt to extricate the U of M from its recurrent, dismally low rankings.

Real problems, no solutions

There are glaring problems at the U of M that no amount of contesting the rankings could ever conceal. Real problems, like a ranking of 13/15 on student services as a percentage of the budget, despite new ancillary fees. Perhaps that is why the university has stopped trying.

I’d like to think that the university administration is too busy circumventing another budgetary shortfall — should the provincial government not immediately concede to the recently demanded 8.9 per cent increase in funding — to contest the Maclean’s rankings this year. Unfortunately, given last year’s ancillary fee theatrics and university president Emoke Szathmary’s comments in the Free Press, stating that the university is “doomed” by chronic underfunding not faced at other institutions, there is little reason to believe this to be true.

The grim reality is that the university can play these dismal rankings to its advantage in seeking further provincial funding, and has learned this. The problems with the university then become not just institutional problems, but ones that carry on — entrenched by time and mediocrity.

As long as the problems with the Maclean’s rankings are addressed only in terms of petty numerical critiques, they will remain. The problem is with our university, regardless of any other explanations.