<p>I have seen several LAC’s tout their participation in the NSSE, National Survey of Student Engagement. What does everything think of these surveys and do you value them? It is a little hard to measure one institution against the other.</p>
<p>I know Clemson proudly used their NSSE surveys as a way to convince students that students love their school.</p>
<p>"National Survey of Student Engagement, 2008</p>
<p>93 percent of students report a favorable image of Clemson University.
91 percent of seniors would choose Clemson if they could start their college career over again.
89 percent of Clemson students believe that this school has a substantial commitment to their academic success.<br>
89 percent of students believe that Clemson places a substantial emphasis on academics"</p>
<p>It depends on what the sample size is and how the survey was conducted (using my AP Statistics knowledge). I’d be interested in how valuable the results are too.</p>
<p>The results that I looked at fell into 5 categories:</p>
<ol>
<li>Level of Academic Challenge</li>
<li>Active and Collaborative Learning </li>
<li>Student/Faculty Interaction</li>
<li>Enriching Educational Experience</li>
<li>Supportive Campus Environment</li>
</ol>
<p>It looks like they survey the students of the participating colleges and break down the results by Freshman and Seniors. It is a bear of a report to tackle and I did not see any type of results by college to compare.</p>
<p>BobbyCT, I just found the NSSE results, they can be found here: </p>
<p><a href=“http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_national.pdf[/url]”>http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_national.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_masters.pdf[/url]”>http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_masters.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_libarts.pdf[/url]”>http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_libarts.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_bacc.pdf[/url]”>http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_bacc.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_other.pdf[/url]”>http://static.usnews.com/documents/college/2008_NSSE_other.pdf</a></p>
<p>Bobby,
I have looked at a lot of the NSSE results for various colleges and IMO, there is great value to be found therein. However, I would say that that value is more related to the individual institution and how it interacts with its students and how they feel about that college. I think it is less valuable as a comparative device as “grading standards” will differ from school to school. Furthermore, many schools either don’t participate in NSSE or publish their results so the universe of data may be limited, depending on which schools you are looking at. Despite these concerns, however, I think that the NSSE information is potentially the best source of information about student attitudes on the college’s campus. Student viewpoints are what matter most on NSSE (and to me) and thus I would encourage you to review these closely when they are available.</p>
<p>BobbyCT, I just found the NSSE results, they can be found here: </p>
<p>Thanks Pierre. I had not seen that summary before. I am just wondering why some of the colleges that I have looked at that provide their NSSE benchmark summary on their web site are not listed on the summary? Also the breakdown is a little different.</p>
<p>hawkette, I appreciate your feedback and everything you said makes sense. I would not use an individual colleges scores to compare against another college, but I might compare it with the national benchmark of all colleges in the NSSE. I agree that the survey provides a valuable insight of a particular college from the students perspective.</p>