The Oct. 2 issue of the Charlatan showed a vortex of data being released concerning Canadian universities and how they’re faring nationally, internationally and on a student level.
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) revealed that over 80 per cent of Carleton students surveyed said their educational experience was good or excellent.
The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings (THE) were also released last week, putting Carleton in the 226-250 slot that considers teaching, international outlook, research, and industry income.
Ken Coates, a former Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo, spoke to CTV News in the wake of concerns over Canadian universities slipping on THE while Asian universities rise.
“This process of rankings is actually very misleading, because it doesn’t tell you very much about the experience as a student at these top-ranked institutions,” Coates said.
He is absolutely right.
The University of Toronto (U of T) is the only Canadian school that broke into the top 20 on THE. While this should certainly be a point of pride it shouldn’t have an effect on where students choose to study.
Students should be focusing on rankings like NSSE that consider schools on the basis of student experience rather than THE—a ranking system that relies on approximately one-third on the school’s reputation, rather than the true quality of the institution.
Whether or not an employer cares about what university you graduated from is a point of contention that can be debated in other forum. But for the majority of the time, a graduate’s employment appeal is mostly based on their personality, experience, references, and connections.
There are exceptions where specialized programs are concerned, but your value as an employee mostly lies in your ability to deal with others.
So if, at the end of the day, your future employer doesn’t care where your school ranked on scales like THE, why should you? It’s unlikely that your individual education will be affected by how good your school’s reputation is, or the quality of research being done behind the scenes.
Instead of choosing your university on how good its reputation is, you should choose it based on how much you’ll get out of those four years.
Rankings like NSSE vary widely based on the individual, but they offer a simplistic and comprehensive snapshot of how students at the school in question are faring. The university’s culture, environment, extra-curricular offerings, and student services are the things that will make your time at school worthwhile.
