University of Montreal is better than McGill

Last night, over quesadillas, Markus was trying to convince me that McGill was a better university than the University of Montreal (UofM). This sounded impossible to me, as everyone in Québec knows the school is crap. Why do I know it is crap? Well, first of all, everyone I know who went there told me it was a walk in the park and they never seemed to be studying, really. Second of all, no one from Québec, (probably the most informed on the school quality), goes there. Also, UofM law students do better than McGill’s at the bar exam. The economics dept. at UofM is among the best in the world (25^th) while McGill’s is not in the Canadian top 10. What else? Affiliated to UofM are HEC Montreal, the tenth best business school in the world outside the US (according to BusinessWeek), and the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, way more respected than McGill by engineering firms in Canada.

But then comes the Times rankings. It’s from an English newspaper. McGill ranks 11^th in the world. Markus sent me the link: (http://www.topuniversities.com). There has got to be something wrong with this. I mean, I know McGill has an international reputation, but that does not mean it has good teaching or research. So I checked how the ranking was determined:

The most important criterion is academic opinion (more than 5000 “experts”, of whom 41 per cent are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 30 per cent in the Americas, and 29 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region), worth 40% of the total score. Already I understand how Cambridge and Oxford rank in the top 4! Then 10% of the grade is derived from active recruiters of graduates from major global and national employers across the public and private sectors. 20% is given to the staff student ratio. To measure research excellence, which is worth 20% of the grade, they use the number of citations of an institution’s published papers by others, divided by the number of full time staff. Finally, 5% is given to the number of foreigners among the staff and the last 5% to the share of overseas students.

First of all, according to the last criterion, schools where English is the language of instruction will do much better. They will attract foreigners. Indeed, McGill not only welcomes Ontarians but also many Americans, Chinese and Indians, UofM only French speaking people. And I think its students are attracted by Montreal itself as much as by the school. And so are its professors. The 40% allocated to expert opinion is obviously way too much, judging by how UK universities do so well in the ranking (many Europeans among the experts). And why give 20% to the staff student ratio? We’re supposed to learn more in small classes, but most of the time small classes are way more relaxed and their examinations are not as rigorous. Students coming out of them may not have reached the needed standards.

That only 10% is given to recruiters’ opinion sounds weird to me. Universities exist to prepare us for a job after all. I know most companies in Québec don’t like McGill graduates that much. So what about the quality of research? The citations method is serious and tells where the best researchers are. But I think here it would be better to measure how well the output of a school gets quoted. Most economists that get quoted did their PhD at MIT, even though they now teach all around the US. What’s important is that MIT produced incredible researchers. After all, a good researcher will probably not be a good teacher.

All in all, I guess McGill does well in the ranking because it’s an Anglophone university with a name easy to remember, with a beautiful and attractive campus located in a cool city. Furthermore it’s relatively cheap compared to American schools. But I wouldn’t send my kids there.