By Jill Reeves and Nazeefa Ahmed, February 9 2025—
Canadian education platform CourseCompare has recently released outcome-based rankings for Canadian post-secondary institutions and their respective programs for 2025. The University of Calgary was ranked fifth among Canada's top post-secondary institutions and was one of two from Alberta, with the University of Alberta placing fourth.
The company ranked universities across Canada based on metrics of student satisfaction, industry reputation, funding and teaching and career reputation, with the latter being given the most weight. Their emphasis on "career-readiness" is practiced through verified ratings from recent graduates, graduate earning potential and industry recognition, among other considerations.
“We believe that it is the role of these institutions to prepare students for the future of work – and how effectively they do so determines their ranking,” reads a statement on their website.
The ranking highlighted the U of C’s 20:1 student-to-teacher ratio and its entrepreneurial initiatives, such as the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking, Innovate Calgary and UCEED as key factors that set the institution apart.
In an interview with the Gauntlet, CEO Robert Furtado discussed the overall improvements achieved by the university in regards to programs and overall rankings.
“The University of Calgary, 10 to 15 years ago was scarcely on the radar of a lot of rankings organizations. It has improved dramatically [appearing] in 11 of our rankings, and it's ranked number five among best universities in Canada,” he said.
However, other ranking organizations place the U of C lower nationally, with Maclean's 2025 reputation survey ranking the university 11th and the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities placing it between 6th and 8th.
Although many ranking lists exist, CourseCompare highlights the fact that their list is unique due to their focus on identifying and comparing institutions based on their ability to prepare students for the future of work.
Furtado stated the value of having CourseCompare rankings focus on career readiness, given that returning student unemployment rates reached 16.7 per cent in 2024, the highest since 2012.
“The labor market's changing and our focus on career readiness allows us to close that gap between traditional methodologies that focus on things like how many books a school has in its library collection which we don't think is necessarily as relevant,” said Furtado.
“Instead, we [focus] on career readiness metrics like job placement rates, student satisfaction scores which we gather based on thousands of online platform ratings and reviews [and] fundamental stuff like graduation rates as well,” he continued.
The Gauntlet reached out to the University of Calgary for comment on CourseCompare’s ranking of the institution.
“While we’re appreciative that we’re evaluated highly in this ranking of Canadian post-secondary institutions, this is not a ranking we have typically followed,” read the statement.
More information on CourseCompare can be found here.
