BC does well in Maclean’s annual university rankings
Posted November 1, 2012 7:38 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you go to one of the big universities in this province, you are going to one of the top schools in the country.
Four schools in BC cracked the top 49 in Maclean’s Magazine’s annual university rankings, including UBC, which finished second overall.
McGill is first.
MacLean’s Senior Editor Mary Dwyer says the schools are ranked on 14 criteria including student awards, student to faculty ratio, and total research dollars.
“UBC improved one spot in student awards, where they placed second,” explains Dwyer. “In faculty awards, they finished fourth and in the reputation survey, they placed second in their category.”
Schools are divided into three categories:
– Medical Doctoral: for universities that offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and research.
– Comprehensive: for universities with a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
– Primarily Undergraduate: for universities largely focused on undergrad education.
In the overall rankings, Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria finished 7th and 12th, respectively, but they came in 1st and 2nd in their category.
“The news for BC is your universities stacked up very well, indeed,” says Dwyer.
The University of Northern BC also had a strong showing at 33rd overall and 2nd in its category.
Click here to find the full list.
Does class size matter?
When it comes to university classes, does size really matter? News1130 is finding out what one campus is doing to enhance the educational experience.
UBC Professor and Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman has found class size is irrelevant if you can’t keep your audience interested. Maclean’s Vancouver Bureau Chief Ken MacQueen tells us Wayman uses several means to make sure students are engaged.
“You can generate discussions on Facebook or other media. They’re using clickers and things like that — electronic clickers. So, a professor at the front of a lecture hall can get a real-time sense of whether the students are ‘getting it,” explains MacQueen.
“He can understand from the questions [and] how they’re responding whether they know what the heck he’s talking about. If not, he can adjust the lecture or ask questions of the students and get them involved in that way.
Wayman also makes use of extensive course web pages as well as email and other online communications. The professor has also found the optimum class size is somewhere under 400 but more than 50; that way, technology can allow for a fair bit of flexibility.
