College

Ontario’s Top 10 Colleges ranked by graduate satisfaction

Is your school on the list?
By Josh Dehaas

Want to know how colleges are doing? Just look at the “Key Performance Data” that the Ontario government makes colleges and universities publish each year. The information is based, in part, on surveys that students complete six months after graduation.

The new 2010 figures suggest colleges are better than they were in 2005. The graduation rate is up from 60 per cent 64 per cent. Employer satisfaction — always high — nudged up from 92 per cent to 93 per cent. Graduate satisfaction also inched its way from from 78 per cent to 79 per cent. The only notable decline was in the employment rate six months after graduation, which slipped from 89 per cent to 83 per cent.

The numbers also show a big range in student satisfaction, so we thought we’d share some details. Of the 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, these 10 had the most graduates who answered that they were “very satisfied” with their college experience when asked six months after graduation in 2010.

1. St. Lawrence – 85 per cent

2. Sault – 85 per cent

3. Northern – 84 per cent

4. St. Clair – 84 per cent

5. Georgian – 83 per cent

6. Confederation – 82 per cent

7. Collège Boréal – 82 per cent

8. Cambrian – 82 per cent

9. La Cité collégiale – 82 per cent

10. Conestoga – 81 per cent