University Rankings

If you just can't get enough of Macleans-type rankings, here are the top 500 universities in the world, according to scholars at the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Go look up all your former schools...I did. I seemed to start out pretty high but went lower and lower after that. Hey, I wonder if that means my BA has more intrinsic value than my PhD? Some would say that's just obviously true anyway ; )

As for Western Canadian schools, UBC comes in at 36, U of A at about 100, and U of S at about 200. As a parent about to send a youngster off to college, I'm looking carefully at these kinds of numbers, and they seem to augment my gut feelings.

UPDATE: If you're looking for American college rankings, go here.

This particular post has become extremely popular, with many people accessing it everyday, and it now ranks fourth in Google for searches on Canadian university rankings, after Macleans, Yahoo, and Contact Singapore. While university rankings are, I believe, very important to consider when you are applying for school or an academic job, I would like to encourage you to consider another, typically overlooked but crucially important aspect of university life.

One important consideration in terms of university rankings that rarely is considered in national and international surveys of education quality is how secure and happy the faculty at any particular university are in their employment. It is very important to try to understand how well a college or university treats its academic staff because the relationship between a college/university employer and any one of its academic staff members can have serious and far-reaching implications for students, as well.

Many people are unaware that profs are not necessarily full-time, tenured faculty. The reality is that an increasing number of university "professors" in Canada are actually part-time lecturers working for little more than you might make as a clerk in a non-unionized store or coffee shop (without tips). These people are not necessarily bad teachers -- in fact, many have a life-long devotion to teaching in their area of study. However, they often lack important teaching and research supports to do their jobs, and they might be less available due to limited office hours, space, marking assistance, or the need to run between various schools to make a living. Many times, they are overworked, stressed, and have limited influence over processes within the academy.

Therefore, it really is best both for students and faculty to attend schools that treat their employees well and have cultivated a respectful, equitable, and healthy work environment for students and employees. To compare Canadian schools in terms of employment benefits check out CAUT's comparison of collective-agreement benefits for member colleges and universities. A warning...some of the information in the chart needs to be updated, as some of the listed benefits have actually decreased substantially rather than increased:

Unfortunately, as contract academic staff issues are pursued with greater vigour, employers are responding with considerable vehemence. Claiming a need for “flexibility”, some employers’ starting proposals include the elimination of all previously-negotiated posting, hiring and job security language. This kind of division makes it extremely difficult to make any meaningful progress in negotiations. Western made some progress, winning right of first refusal and multi-year contracts. But it was a struggle. Employers also do their best to capitalize on divisions between full and part-time faculty, refusing to negotiate improvements for part-timers while offering improvements to full-time terms and conditions, for example. It is important for faculty associations to resist these kinds of tactics. [Link]

Regrettably, some unions are not resisting these kinds of tactics, and some contingent faculty in Canada have lost seniority and other job-security benefits outright in trade-offs at negotiation time. In unions containing both contingent and tenured faculty, contingent faculty, who are often (but not always) in the minority, can see their job security bargained away in favour of more attractive benefits for tenured faculty (e.g., professional expense increases, free tuition for their children, travel, etc.). In colleges and universities where contingent faculty are in the majority, they may be afraid to use their "power in numbers" due to individuals' fear of not being rehired in the next academic year if they previously participated in a contingent-faculty coup.

Therefore, before you decide to study at or take a job based on the rank of a university, you might consider where that school ranks in terms of proportion and treatment of contingent faculty (e.g., sessionals, lecturers, term, adjuncts). Poor working conditions for faculty can make for poor study conditions for students. To learn more about many schools in Canada with regard to this issue, you can start with the CAUT material I have linked to here, but you also might consider talking with full-time and contingent faculty at the school where you would like to study in order to learn more about that school's philosophy. For some additional perspective on why this is such a serious issue, you might also read this post, this site, this site, as well as the sites listed here. In case you're thinking of going to a Canadian free university, you might consider reading this, keeping in mind the current working conditions for contract academic staff all over Canada. If you want to know more about college and university rankings, in general, read this.