More than 43,000 students rate 55 universities.

[Cheese]

The Article

The Rankings

The report also enabled prospective undergrads to gain insight about the experience they could expect from different universities. As the single largest, publicly-available, undergraduate student-satisfaction survey in Canada, the report asks students to rate their own campuses on about 100 distinct elements of university life.

University of Calgary doesnt fare very well in the rankings.

[Sainters7]

UofA looks like it fared pretty well.

[Dan02]

lol @ ease of course registration, UofC dead last, bring back infonet!

[JohnnyB]

Apparently I only attend awful universities. SFU and the UofT are about the lowest average you could have over two degrees by that ranking.

[GreenLantern]

I would say that is accurate for UofS, our very good out weighs the very bad, but still keeps us average.

[HelloHockeyFans]

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.

[flip]

The big thing about ranking universities is that after your first job no one will care where you went to school. And if they do it won't be a good place to work anyways.

[Mike F]

The most important thing when looking at these is the spread -- Mostly from As at the top to Bs at the bottom.

Can't really consider any school's "ranking" as beeing very meaningful, IMO -- "Uh, oh, instead of excellent, we're just really, really good"

[MelBridgeman]

Ya rankings mean squat...after a couple of years, where you went to school for most professions, means squat

[FlamesAddiction]

Nice to see ULeth do pretty good for small universities. I enjoyed my time there and thought they had some excellent profs.

[REDVAN]

One important point that I would like to make about these rankings is this:

Often times the University of Calgary gets low rankings on a lot of categories, and this study is no different. I have been there for six years and would maybe not rank it so low.

There is a culture of discontent at the U of C. It is the cool thing to hate your school here. And in most cases it has absolutely nothing to do with how the school actually is, or how various things perform, it's just easier to complain and fit in rather than praise and be questioned.

I don't really understand why this culture exists, but it is so pervasive that the administration at the U of C will have to work for years to remove it.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Dan02

lol @ ease of course registration, UofC dead last, bring back infonet!

People are just spoiled and are dealing with transitioning to a new method of registering. If you ask in 2 years, all the people who remember infonet will be graduated and that stat will be gone and those who remain will not care.

[Torture]

As much as I hate Peoplesoft, Infonet was pretty terrible itself

At least Peoplesoft doesn't go down for maintenance at 11:00 every night.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Torture

As much as I hate Peoplesoft, Infonet was pretty terrible itself

At least Peoplesoft doesn't go down for maintenance at 11:00 every night.

Maybe it should. So far, when I have needed it, its been down. Peoplesoft is the great Satan.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Rathji

People are just spoiled and are dealing with transitioning to a new method of registering. If you ask in 2 years, all the people who remember infonet will be graduated and that stat will be gone and those who remain will not care.

No, it is garbage.

So damned slow.

[liamenator]

What I've never understood about these type of student input rankings is... There seems to be a disconnect: How can you compare the schools after the data is collected when they are not being compared in the data collection process, i.e. When you ask an undergrad in their 3rd year at U of C (that has never been to another campus, let alone taken a course at another campus, let alone spent a year or more at another campus) how they would rank it, what is their point of comparison?

So these studies are coloured by the types of cultures of discontent that REDVAN pointed out re: UofC; and also by the super-crazy-pride from schools who's students tow the company line better.

From my own experience, having attended 2 Universities on opposite sides of the country, I agree HHF in saying that University is what you make of it. Each institution has its strengths and weaknesses, and different programs will be more emphasized, etc. There will be students that go to less prestigious institutions that come away with "more" (whatever that means) than somebody who half-asses their way through a degree at McGill or UofT, while the opposite holds true as well. So comparisons like this don't make a lot of sense to me.

[Flamesguy_SJ]

UNB didn't do so badly in any of these rankings, though i have a feeling that's largely due to Fredericton students as opposed to Saint John ones.

[troutman]

How can a student answer this if they have only been to one university? How can they compare?

[flip]

I will third the notion that there is a coolness to discontent at the U of C. Or rather one might say it is simply uncool to like the U of C. It has its problems, like any other institution but the U gets a bad rap in this city and in the country because the students lack pride in it. If everyone said it was great, it would attract more students that want to go to the UofC because it is well liked and they would subsequently be more apt to like their experience.