By Geoff Smith (@GeoffSmithLNN on Twitter)

U of L remains in top 5, despite slip in Maclean’s ranking

Oct 19, 2017 | 11:25 AM

LETHBRIDGE – Despite a slight slip in position, the University of Lethbridge is pleased to remain in the top five of a national ranking. 

The annual Maclean’s magazine ranking of universities places the U of L fourth out of 19 schools in the category of primarily undergraduate. Lethbridge traded places with Trent University, which is now ranked third.

University of Lethbridge president and vice-chancellor Dr. Mike Mahon said it’s good to be in the top five for a sixth consecutive year.

“I think it demonstrates that the university is continuing to do good things with our students, and from a research perspective,” Mahon said. He added the drop from third to fourth is interesting, but it’s difficult to ascertain exactly why without access to the complete scores.

“We did seem to have a bit of a drop in our library budget,” he explained. “We’re not sure why that happened, because we didn’t decrease our library acquisitions budget. There may be something weird going on there; we’re not really sure.”

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The magazine ranked the U of L first in its category for student services, and second for medical/science grants. It placed 10th for student satisfaction, and fourth for reputational survey.

“You see this in the rankings where there’s a bit of back and forth between a few institutions,” Mahon said. “We don’t put too much stock in those kind of minor changes.”

He added that since schools are being compared with each other, it may be just as much about what other institutions have done. He also explained the university collects a lot of its own data that it uses to evaluate itself.

Mahon feels student retention is one area where they have room to improve. Another is social sciences research.

He understands that this is one thing that students and parents use to evaluate schools.

“I think for families and prospective students it’s only one measure for them. They look at all sorts of factors, from location to cost to perceived quality based not necessarily on Maclean’s rankings but on word of mouth from other students and alumni,” he said.

Mount Allison finished first in the primarily undergraduate category. The top ranked comprehensive school was Simon Fraser. McGill remains the number one medical/doctoral school.