TORONTO - The University of Toronto has lobbed a verbal volley at Maclean's in an effort to get the magazine to change its annual rankings measurements for research-intensive universities.

In a story in the Oct. 21 U of T Bulletin, that University's Public Affairs Director, Susan Bloch-Nevitte, writes that U of T President Robert Birgeneau sent a letter Oct. 7 to Ann Dowsett Johnston, lead editor of the annual Maclean's universities report.

The Bulletin story states Birgeneau wants to start discussion on a new approach to the rankings "with the expectation that changes would be reflected in the 2003 edition".

He said that without substantial change in the methodology, U of T would have to "re-evaluate its participation in the Maclean's survey." His letter was copied to the presidents of nine other research-intensive Canadian universities.

"Having created a separate category for research universities, Maclean's should now take the next logical step of creating an array of indicators which measure the activities of a research university," Birgeneau wrote to Dowsett Johnston.

"There are no separate indicators for graduate education activity; most importantly, research productivity accounts for only 14 per cent of the total ranking" in the current approach.

In an interview Birgeneau said that the inclusion of new indices relevant to major research universities would make the annual survey more useful to students and would set a higher methodological standard for university rankings.

"For prospective students to make truly informed decisions, they need to know more about all the variables that are relevant to a research-intensive university - about the strength of the faculty, the quality of the graduate students and of graduate education," he said.

"We'd like to remain a part of the survey but we'd also like to ensure that it is relevant and useful to prospective students." U of T has held the No. 1 spot in the medical/doctoral category for the past eight years. The 2002 survey will be made public Nov. 11.

In his letter Birgeneau noted that despite breaking down universities into three sub-groups (medical/doctoral, comprehensive and primarily undergraduate) "the indicators remain essentially the same for all three categories."

His letter proposed a number of new indicators, among them the number of faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows receiving significant international awards and/or competitively awarded fellowships, number of Canada Research Chairs, total financial support per doctoral student, royalties from patents issued and completion rates and time to completion for doctoral students.

Birgeneau would also like to see other less research-specific indices such as percentage of students housed on campus and percentage who receive financial aid.

He said the data and measurements he's proposing could be obtained with relative ease since much of it is already compiled among the so-called G-10 Canadian universities - research-intensive institutions that produce significant numbers of PhDs, have higher numbers of post-doctoral fellows and receive larger amounts of funding from the national research granting councils.

While Birgeneau and Dowsett Johnston have not yet spoken on the issue, she says, "President Birgeneau's letter is most welcome."

For more information, contact communications.office@usask.ca

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