The Maclean's magazine ranking of Canadian universities was released this week and Memorial University has maintained its fifth place standing in the comprehensive university category.

Maclean's ranks Canadian post-secondary institutions annually on a range of factors in six broad areas. Comprehensive universities like Memorial are ranked on 13 performance measures.

“Memorial’s numbers have remained consistent over the last year with eight of the 13 indicator rankings not changing at all,” said Paul Chancey, director of Memorial’s Centre for Institutional Analysis and Planning.

”Memorial did particularly well in terms of its total library expenditures, library holdings per student, student faculty ratio and operating budget.”

Memorial’s dean of Student Affairs and Services, Dr. Lilly Walker, said that while the university continues to build an excellent reputation, this year’s rankings identified some areas for improvement.

“We are aware of certain areas where Memorial needs to improve, particularly in terms of retention,” said Dr. Walker. “Over the next year, we will continue to focus on ways to improve in this area and in doing so we expect Memorial’s ranking to improve."

According to the magazine, the 11 universities in the comprehensive category have a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees.

Memorial is not reported in a number of tables in the Maclean’s rankings issue because the tables are based on data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and from the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium data. Memorial did not participate in the NSSE survey until 2008, but expects that this data will be reflected the next year’s Maclean’s rankings issue.