April 3, 1998

Opening windows in the ivory tower

Dead last. That's where the U of A ranked in Maclean's magazine's alumni support category included in its comprehensive rankings of medical/doctoral universities.

But that will likely change, says Ann Dowsett Johnston, editor of the influential rankings issue. "We are seeing levels of philanthropy that we've never seen before; in five years the U of A will be quite thrilled to have it [included]."

Dowsett Johnston doesn't expect to change the way the magazine calculates average entering grades: the U of A ranks 12th out of 15. Yes, she acknowledges, she's heard the complaints from U of A administrators who say the magazine doesn't account for grade inflation in Ontario high schools. "There's a lot of conversation about that issue. But there's one truth when it comes to ranking -- and Rod Fraser when he was at Queen's was one of the most eloquent in terms of persuading me -- you only measure what you can, you only measure what is measurable." She suggests it would be virtually impossible to weight and assign a number to students from the various provinces.

On the contentious issue of whether the universities' data are comparable and gathered uniformly -- another issue that stimulates cross-country discussions about the legitimacy of the rankings -- Dowsett Johnston says some universities have worked harder at it.and this does not make them liars or cheats. "They understood earlier that it was to their benefit to spend the time. Some found reasonable and legitimate ways of answering it [the survey instrument the magazine uses to gather data] correctly that others had not thought of. Others learned from them."

One university was thought to have pulled out for political reasons, but Dowsett Johnston believes it pulled out because it didn't want their raw numbers shown to other universities. "We are the messenger. We hear it when people say 'Those numbers are way out of line.' And we take it very seriously."

Last fall, for example, one university in the top five submitted numbers which sent up a red flag. "We phoned them back and said we're not going to tell you what you've done wrong, but would you please look at this indicator. We knew they hadn't spent enough time on it, and we just knew that their numbers were wrong."

Dowsett Johnston is clearly pleased with the role the magazine has carved out for itself in an era of accountability. Perhaps, she says, it was slightly ahead of the times with the introduction of the rankings issue almost a decade ago. It stemmed, she says, from the moral belief that if publicly-funded universities aren't counting and comparing class sizes, why not? They are in the U.S. The university community was very comfortable as the Goliath. "We were the David -- not to slay Goliath -- but to challenge and point out that it is a culture of accountability."

Readers can expect the magazine to turn its attention to "output measures." Did the student consumer get what he or she needed? In the long term that's exactly what you want to know, says Dowsett Johnston. She says undergraduate students aren't having the quality of experience she enjoyed at university. Between 1995 and 1997, full-time faculty declined by six per cent, first-year classes taught by tenured faculty dropped by three per cent and classes in first and second-year were cut by six per cent. Those are telling stats, she says.

Dowsett Johnston, a keen observer of the cultural shifts taking place on campuses across the country, says the U of A has been way ahead of other universities in its effort to raise the public profile of post-secondary education. She acknowledges some people are cynical about the U of A's ".it makes sense" campaign and the "Think About It" campaign at UBC. "But there's substance beneath these campaigns. They're not just slogans. This university understands what others have not -- that there needs to be windows into the ivory tower and the ivory tower needs to reach out. That's a huge shift, universities understanding that they belong to the community."

Perhaps no other publication in the country looks more often -- and more closely -- through those ivory tower windows. Dowsett Johnston is proud of the magazine's role in putting post-secondary education on the journalistic agenda. Forty-two pages every year in the rankings issue, publication of The Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities, and regular education coverage all reflect the high priority the issues are given, she says. In addition, they reflect how important they are to Canadians.

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