University rankings seem to be taken too seriously by a lot of people in my opinion. Don't professional degrees require program accrediting before a school can even offer it? If this is the case, then the content of the program should be identical.
At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the individual student on just how much he/she gets out of the education he/she has paid for.
I do agree that professors matter, but there again, a university's reputation can only do so much in luring people to that institution when a host of other factors come into the decision making process.
As far as practicality of a degree goes, I think the most important feature of a university program is the marriage of the program with a CO-OP program. When I'm looking at resumes of prospective applicants I know the first thing I'm looking for is relevant work experience for new grads. As long as I've heard of the university before, University of Toronto vs. Lakehead University really doesn't mean all that much to me... except the big difference between the two universities is that Lakehead offers an actual CO-OP program where the university helps the students during the placement process to find suitable workterm companies, whereas U of T requires students to complete a certain number of hours before the degree can be attained, but working as technical support for Dell would qualify towards their version of CO-OP. Lakehead, in this example, would get the edge big time.
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