Why was ConU badly rated by its students?

According to the latest Canadian University Report Card where more than 26,000 students were polled about their views on their respective institutions and university experiences and Concordia students aren’t rating their university in the top ten ranks.

Why is that?

Concordia communications director Dennis Murphy surmises that controversial issues around campus in the past couple of years, such as past CSU handbooks and Netanyahu’s cancelled speech on Sept. 9, may have prompted the 358 students from Concordia who filled out the survey released by The Globe and Mail last week, to respond so critically.

Murphy points out that the survey’s participation rate was very low compared to the number of students enrolled (some 32,000) and that in turn only presents a “very segmented view” from the student body.

Concordia ranked in 37th place (38 universities were considered for this survey) when it came to what students think Concordia’s reputation is amongst prospective employers.

On the University Report Card web site, one student said “the university itself is preparing me. I am just worried that my degree will be worth nothing because of Concordia’s bad reputation.”

Murphy believes those fears may be unfounded. He says that alternatively, in other surveys done by different faculties at Concordia, their results found that employers actually don’t have such a slanted view of Concordia. “I think their [the students’] opinions are overweighted,” explained Murphy.

He said that often “the people on the inside see things differently then the people on the outside.”

While it is true that McGill surpasses Concordia in almost every category in the poll, for the exception of the course registration, variety and availability category where Concordia ranked 18th and McGill ranked 32nd, Murphy pointed out that “the fine arts program was ranked number one by those students (who filled out the survey) [and that] the quality of teaching was ranked 7th …making it the largest institution in Canada to be leading in education.” The first six universities were smaller in comparison.

Concordia also made the top ten in public transportation and cultural diversity off-campus, respectively ranking 3rd and 4th. In the usefulness of faculty feedback and ease of course registration categories, the university barely made it in at number ten for each category.

The students polled for this survey were all members of StudentAwards.com.

Log on to www.universityreportcard.com for more details.

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