Two Saskatchewan universities are considering their options after 11 other Canadian universities have refused to participate in the annual rankings survey by Maclean's magazine.

A letter signed by 11 presidents went up on university websites Monday. It says they have problems with the methodology and validity of some of the results of the annual survey and would not be participating this year.

In the 2005 Maclean's survey, the University of Saskatchewan finished 10th out of 15 in the medical-doctoral category.

Those saying no to the Maclean's survey are:

• University of Toronto
• McMaster University
• University of Ottawa
• University of British Columbia
• Simon Fraser University
• University of Alberta
• University of Calgary
• University of Lethbridge
• University of Manitoba
• Université de Montréal
• Dalhousie University

The universities of Saskatchewan and Regina aren't among them, but officials at the two institutions say they're thinking of pulling out, too.

In their letter, the presidents call the way Maclean's compiles information on each university's performance oversimplified and arbitrary.

They say some of the data is based on sample sizes that are too small to be useful.

They also say giving each university an overall ranking from one on down doesn't give the full picture. It doesn't, for example, take into account a university that has a top-ranked program in one area and a lower-ranked program in another.

Peter MacKinnon, the president of the University of Saskatchewan, says he shares that concern.

"We know that the University of Manitoba, which is often 15th in that medical-doctoral group, is a very good university in many, many areas and yet the survey tells us nothing about that," he said. "I think that's a huge deficiency and it's not very helpful to students."

However, Tony Keller, the managing editor at Maclean's in charge of special projects, said the survey is a useful tool for the public and will continue in spite of the non-participation of the 11 universities.

"There's nobody else putting out this data," he said.

The magazine will use publicly available information to rank the non-participating universities, Keller added.