From fame to shame

In 2006, Tom Traves, then-president of Dalhousie University, formed a coalition of 11 schools, nine of which were among the top 15 research universities in Canada. The 11 presidents of the represented universities signed an open letter addressed to Maclean’s Magazine, denouncing their method of producing university rankings for their annual Education issue. These schools refused to participate in the Maclean’s questionnaires, which gathered administrative data about schools’ student bodies and opinions of other institutions.