Feedback survey short of student data

Only half of Canada's universities have agreed to be surveyed for a student satisfaction ranking to be published next month.

Maclean's , a weekly news magazine that already publishes a university rankings issue in November and a book-style guide in March, will publish a new "university student issue" next month. The edition features satisfaction rates among recent graduates.

Some of the country's biggest institutions, including the universities of Toronto and Alberta, and the Universite de Montreal, said they would not help the magazine collect its data. More than two dozen others have notified Maclean's of their decision to pull out.

"If we don't have good participation by universities, we could have a problem in future years," said Tony Keller, managing editor of special projects for Maclean's .

Despite the setback, he has been putting together the issue for its June 19 publication date. The website has received more than 11,000 completed surveys. Mr Keller said he would be using more publicly available data to fill some of the void.

Maclean's rankings have been a staple of Canadian higher education marketing for 15 years, but some universities complain about the resources it takes to gather the data. Toronto says the work to fulfil Maclean's various needs takes the equivalent of one person working 12 to 15 weeks.

Montreal's estimates are much lower at just one person working one week.

Maclean's asked institutions to contact 4,000 former students, across the classes of 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Toronto president David Naylor cited "respondent fatigue" as one of the reasons his university decided not to participate.

But Mr Keller said individual universities needed only to send out a mass e-mail that included a web address to direct students to a five-minute survey.

He disputed Toronto's claim, saying: "There is no fatigue among the public in seeing these surveys. In many cases, students have not been able to see the results of surveys they participated in."

He said he hoped the universities would become less stingy with information and release more student and alumni satisfaction figures to the press.

While the graduate survey may have run into trouble, Maclean's rankings show no signs of disappearing. Pierre Simonet, Montreal's senior administrator, helped decide to take his university out of the survey, saying it was not worth the effort. But he seemed to appreciate the general rankings. He said they allowed him to see data from other universities.