President's Column: Go Public or Perishby Bonnie Patteson, To many academics, the annual Maclean's Ranking of Canadian universities is a bit of a yawn. Not to say that we are not curious about the results, but as an academic exercise it is easy to criticize the indicators selected and/or how they are calculated, let alone their meaning! Often questioned is the relevancy of several specific indicators used including, for example, library holdings per student, in a time when access to the masses of digitally available resource materials may well be more important to some disciplines than books purchased for the shelves. Yet, the indicators and rankings are public. They are of interest to the public. And, as a recent survey of the "Nexus" generation demonstrated, they too are used by potential students in their search for the "right" university. We are fortunate to have retained our first place ranking within Ontario universities of a similar nature and a fourth place position in a Canadian context. Trent draws high marks from Maclean's in many categories not the least of which are in the number of national awards earned by both faculty and our students. Several other highlights are included in Trent's public news release available on our Web site.
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