SFU top comprehensive school as Maclean’s releases its 20th university rankings

Maclean’s magazine unveiled its influential and controversial 2010 university rankings on Wednesday, and little has changed at the top.

Divided into three categories based on the amount of research they undertake and whether they offer graduate programs, the top-ranked school in each of the three fields remained the same as last year.

In the comprehensive field, Simon Fraser in Burnaby topped the rankings.

And in the schools offering primarily undergraduate programs, Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., was ranked first. In the medical/doctoral category, McGill University in Montreal remains No. 1.

The magazine’s university rankings, released for the first time in 1991, have generated controversy over the years, with some schools refusing to participate at times.

In 2006, for example, 26 of 47 universities —including the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Concordia, Dalhousie, Universite de Montreal, Queen’s and University of Toronto —refused to complete a ranking questionnaire. A group of 11 schools said the rankings were “over-simplified and arbitrary” and in such areas as reputation, the universities criticized low-response rates.

Information on such indicators as research grants, operating budget, student services spending, scholarship and bursaries, library expenses and acquisitions were taken from other official sources or previous reports, Macleans’s said at the time.

Source: Postmedia News