FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| BOOKS People beginning, or returning to, university careers should know exactly what to expect from their chosen institution of higher learning. Considering they'll graduate with a degree and an average debt of $25,000, spending time choosing a school with the correct fit should help cut down on the number of sleepless nights pondering questions like: "Why did I go here?" Full of information on Canada's 52 universities, the third annual Maclean's University Guide is as essential a tool for every wanna-be student as pens and free beer coupons. Unlike the more infamous and longer-running rankings of the universities that appear annually in Maclean's magazine, the guide comes complete with 48 pages on scholarships and bursaries, a two-page profile of each university, comparisons of rent and residence costs in each community, and comments from students on each campus. "It's kind of like big brother or sister in a book," says author Ann Dowsett Johnston, in Calgary recently as part of a cross-country book tour. "Kids are getting caught in the financial crunch. The government downloading has been put on the kids. We thought, 'What would be most helpful for them?'" That thought is paying off. Last year's guide sold 35,000 copies - huge numbers for any Canadian book. "Going to university is so much more than going to classes," Dowsett Johnston says. "There are a lot of great universities in this country and they're all different. "The biggest thing you have to choose is the environment you want to be in." And although the rankings of the universities are included in the guide, the author suggests looking beyond those numbers at the other information contained in the guide. "The rankings only tell part of the story," she explains. "Class sizes vary all over the country, and in (some schools) first-year students have less access to tenured professors than do the third-years." If anyone recalls when the rankings came out last fall, many people at the University of Calgary were riled up over the school dropping from its 1996 position. But that doesn't necessarily mean that school is inferior to others, says Dowsett Johnston, adding she didn't wear a flak jacket upon her return to the city despite that furor. "In the reputation survey, the University of Calgary did very well," she says. And because the school has had to deal with government funding cuts for longer than some other universities, it is well ahead when it comes to the hot potato of big business investing in universities, she points out. "There's a lot of suspicion about corporations in universities, but it is the way of the future. The money has to come from other sources. Mr. Klein isn't going to say, 'I'm sorry I took that money away, now I'm going to give it back to you.'" Banking on the continued success of the guide, Dowsett Johnston says plans are already under way to have a community college guide on the shelves later this year. If the community college guide is as well documented as its counterpart for the universities, Canadian students should look at the books as investments in their future, not as another expense. |