Queen’s still sits behind McGill, UBC and U of T in university rankings recently released by The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) and Maclean’s Magazine.

Queen’s was at the front of the pack in student satisfaction, however. The university came first in the Maclean’s student satisfaction ranking — a new category in this year’s rankings — fourth in the Medical Doctoral category and fourth overall in the 2016 Maclean’s Canadian University rankings, just as they ranked in 2014.

All three universities ahead in the rankings are larger than Queen’s, each with student populations ranging from 31,000 to 75,000 students, compared to Queen’s student body of around 21,000 full-time students.

Maclean’s reputational survey of guidance counselors, university officials, CEOs and recruiters raised Queen’s to number five in “highest quality” category while the university came eighth in the “most innovative” and “leaders of tomorrow” categories.

These rankings came as the student to faculty ratio declined slightly at Queen’s. The university still maintains the highest retention rate for students from first to second year.

The CWUR positioned Queen’s at 284th out of over 25,000 degree-granting institutions around the world in their 2015 international rankings, down from last year’s ranking of 277th. Twelve Canadian universities were ranked higher than Queen’s.

CWUR uses eight points to rank the world’s top 1,000 universities: quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, citations, broad impact and patents.

The Financial Times released their list of the top 100 full-time global MBA programs, which placed Queen’s 86th in the world. It placed Queen’s third in Canada, behind University of Toronto’s Rottman School of Business, which was number 53, and University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business which was ranked 81st.

Queen’s didn’t do as well in the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom’s (JCCF) Campus Freedom Index.

The JCCF uses a five-tier letter grading scale to measure the state of free speech at 55 public Canadian universities. The grading focuses on what a university claims to do compared to their practices.

Queen’s was awarded a ‘C’ for their policies and a ‘D’ for its practices.  The report claims that their practices could be used “to censor speech and fail to prohibit security fees from being used to censor” and cited its past censorship of a free speech wall.

Due to a lack of a universal rule at Queen’s, potential censorship at events is left up to Event Services on a case-by-case basis.

In regards to practices, the JCCF noted its own involvement at Queen’s two years ago. In April 2013, the JCCF erected a free speech wall in partnership with Queen’s Students for Liberty (Queen’s SFL) in the hopes of raising awareness about freedom of expression in Canada.

Due to a lack of a universal rule at Queen’s, potential censorship at events is left up to Event Services on a case-by-case basis.

Organizers intended to display the wall for four days in April 2013. However, Queen’s security confiscated the wall on the first day. At the time, Provost Alan Harrison told the National Post that the wall was taken down due to “hate speech” and “racial slurs”.