By Kenny Yum
Ryerson students will see little change in their courses regardless of how their faculties scored in the departmental rankings released last week.
“The faculty is not doing a lot about the survey,” said Patrick Hynes, v-p of Finance and Development. Hynes put together the ranking system using data from course evaluation surveys conducted by Ryerson last term. He has approached the Academic Council previously on two occasions with the survey, but to no avail.
“Now that we’re a university, everybody is looking at Ryerson to see if we are going to clean up our act (academically),” Hynes said, adding that some professors who he has talked to “don’t give a damn” about the rankings. He says the faculties in the top two thirds don’t have to worry, but the lower ranked programs have to improve.
The rankings, published in last week’s Eyeopener, revealed that Health Services management and Child and Youth Care topped the list for the 1994 Fall term. Civil/Survey and Electrical Engineering students ranked their departments as the two lowest of 34 courses at Ryerson. Interior Design and Film did not participate.
“Our program is one of the toughest academic programs in Ryerson,” said Stalin Boctor, the chair of Electrical Engineering, whose faculty ranked second last. Boctor said that highly academic courses tend to stay low in the departmental surveys. He also adds that the average Ryerson engineering students enters from high school with a mid-70 per cent average, while other universities have a high 80 per cent acceptance average.
“We can’t keep spoon feeding the students the information,” Boctor said, adding that if the program lowers its standards, it could lose accreditation.
The administration at the bottom-ranked Civil/Survey Engineering department refused to speak to The Eyeopener about the rankings, but their students did speak and had mixed opinions.
“Generally, I ranked some of the profs bad and some good,” says Jason O’Connor, a first-year Civil Engineering student. “Our main program is good, but demanding.” he adds. But another student who did not want to be identified said, “Some instructors are a little old fashioned. What they are teaching is not up-to-date.”
Hynes says students would not be naive to take surveys at face value, even if they ranked their faculty in the bottom. “Some people think that Civil Engineering students now think their program is shitty because they read the survey,” Hynes said. “I have a little more faith, and I don’t think students look at this and say ‘Civil Engineering is shitty, I’m changing programs.'” The top two departments, Health Services Management and Child and Youth Care, are both part-time degree programs.
“We have mature students who have a lot of responsibilities in life who have a lot of other responsibilities in life who have made a decision to return to school,” said Francis Hare, director of the Child & Youth Care program.
She says that they have about 120 students, the majority of whom are professionals in the field. “We have high standards,” Hare said. “Almost half the people who have completed the program graduated with honours.”
Hynes admits that the survey may not be completely accurate, as students tend to be “friendly” when filling out surveys. There is also the point that Ryerson is a Polytechnic. “We’re not a typical university,” Hynes said. Bringing professionals to teach at Ryerson gives students a taste of the real world, but he also added “can they teach?”
Hynes said faculties in the lower rankings should be making changes. He dismisses critics who say the surveys don’t amount to anything. The rankings are a sign students may not be happy with their program.
“Last semester, Interior Design finished in the basement (of the rankings) and it turns out that the students had problems with a lot of their teachers,” Hynes said.
The department survey for the current term will be released next September. Hynes says that he will continue releasing rankings in the future to get programs to realize they may have to make changes. “Somebody’s got to rock the boat and let them now that students aren’t going to sit around.”
Leave a Reply