Maclean's ME strikes back at U of Alberta president

Tony Keller, managing editor for special projects at Maclean's, has published a 2,000-word critique on the American website Inside HigherEd, suggesting that at least one Canadian university is cooking the books when it comes to releasing data about the entering grades of their undergraduate students.

In particular, he focusses on the University of Alberta, whose president Indira Samarasakera last week wrote on the same website urging U.S. universities to follow Canadian universities' lead with Maclean's and snub all such magazine rankings.

[UPDATE: a campaign to do just that is growing in the U.S. According to a story in the Christian Science Monitor, a letter is making the rounds with a group of U.S. college presidents urging their fellows to boycott the annual U.S. News and World Report university rankings -- upon which Maclean's is said to have modelled its annual issue.]

This is, of course, more of the continuing conflict between Maclean's and Canada's largest universities, about the magazine's longstanding university rankings (see earlier posts). Keller points readers to his blog, where he amplifies his criticism of U of A (apparently 2,000 words was not enough to contain his outrage) and promises more next week.

It is hard to see what Maclean's hopes to gain by this. The stakes are high for the magazine, which built the university rankings into a very lucrative franchise that is in significant jeopardy if the universities succeed in shutting off the data tap.

The tone of the statements coming from both sides is amazingly aggressive. Keller, for instance, accuses the president of one of the universities he has to get onside (if this is ever to be settled) of character assassination and falsehoods. This, despite the fact that Keller has apparently spent a lot of time visiting universities, implementing improvements in the rankings methodology and seeking some sort of peace with the university presidents.

It is hard to see how this most recent exchange will do anything but make finding any compromise that much harder. Maybe Maclean's doesn't care whether it wins back cooperation from the universities anymore.