So, back to our favourite hobby of delving in to the causes of Toronto students’ misery. Today’ we’re looking at the issue of institutional size and asking the question: are Toronto schools Too Big Not to Fail?

(For those of you tired of hearing about Toronto, bear with us: you can learn a lot about satisfaction generally by following this series.)

First, to put this all in perspective: this year’s Canadian University Report data shows that Toronto students are really unhappy (Figure 1). On a nine-point scale, they rate their satisfaction 0.75 points lower than students from elsewhere in Canada. Given that no school receives an overall satisfaction score less than a 5.8 or greater than 8.2, this is a rather substantial difference (a standard deviation of 1.5, 1.5 standard deviations, if your unit of analysis is university means).

One obvious suspect is size. Toronto has some of the largest institutions in Canada, and smaller schools generally do better on the CUR, as a quick glance at the results charts in this year’s edition (or at Figure 2) will tell you.

So, given that a majority of students in our sample attend massive schools like University of Toronto or York University, is “Colossal U” the barrier to Toronto’s satisfaction? A closer look at the data suggests not. Toronto actually has institutions in all four CUR size categories. While the size hypothesis could account for low satisfaction grades at U of T’s St. George campus (B-) or York (C+) (Ryerson’s B actually hugs the national average for schools its size), it hardly explains sentiments at Mississauga (C+) or Scarborough (C+). OCAD’s B-minus is perhaps the ultimate proof; it’s not bad for a Toronto school, but still the lowest score nationally among very small institutions. That’s what teaching Torontonians will do to you.

In short, Toronto’s misery is not concentrated in any one institution or even one type of institution; it’s spread among the big and the small alike, as Figure 3 demonstrates.

So much for that obvious explanation. Maybe the problem is that we’re asking the wrong question: instead of looking at sources of dis-satisfaction, we need to take a harder look at what factors (other than size) are associated with satisfaction – in particular, the correlation between certain types of institutional and student characteristics that seem to positively affect satisfaction. Stay tuned.

— Alex Usher and Jason Rogers.

For the record, no actual Torontonians work at Higher Education Strategy Associates.