Reprinted with permission
FreeTimes: Issue #20.52 :: 12/26/2007 - 01/01/2008

Survey Says
Student Engagement Survey
Adds to College Rankings Picture BY MINDY LUCAS

Columbia College sophomore Kay Herrington is one busy student. When not taking 18 hours of classes and working as a student mentor in Columbia College’s Center for Engaged Learning, Herrington participates in not one but five clubs and groups on campus.

“I always said I wanted to be more well-rounded and not limited to just one thing,” Herrington says, laughing.

Double majoring in political science and English, Herrington might think of herself as being well rounded but college administrators refer to it as being engaged in college life.

However one prefers to describe it, until recently those who track student involvement were hard pressed to quantify the dynamic. After all, how does one gauge something as elusive and subjective as students’ perceptions of their college experiences?

Enter the National Survey of Student Engagement, or NSSE (pronounced “nessie”). The brainchild of post-secondary education expert George Kuh, the NSSE attempts to provide an estimate of how undergraduates spend their time and what they gain from attending college. Likewise, the survey can help college-bound students gain a better understanding of institutions they are considering, a perspective that goes beyond traditional evaluations like the much ballyhooed U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Given to first-year students and seniors, the NSSE, which began surveying undergraduates in 2000, asks students such questions as how often they attended a cultural event and whether they participated in a community based project or had conversations with students of a race or ethnicity different from their own.

The results of the survey are provided to colleges and universities in the form of a numerical score in five key areas, including student-faculty interaction and to what degree the campus environment is supportive.

Until recently, survey results were primarily used by college administrators and only as a confidential internal assessment tool. But this year, for the first time, NSSE has begun encouraging participating institutions to make their scores publicly available and many colleges and universities have followed suit, says Laurie Hopkins, Columbia College’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. Some 257 colleges and universities have posted their scores online through a partnership with USA Today.

Columbia College is the only institution in the Midlands that has posted its scores. As for USC, the Columbia campus participates in the NSSE but does not post its scores, while the Aiken and Upstate campuses do.

“I think colleges more and more are trying to make that information public,” Hopkins says, adding that the NSSE has helped administrators at the private women’s college better understand which sorts of activities their students were engaged in. In some cases the college was able to improve on those experiences, she says.

“We’ve worked on our service learning and internship opportunities,” Hopkins says, adding that the college’s popular day of service, when students participate in community volunteer opportunities, was started because of the NSSE.

But the implications of the survey going public are even greater than a participating institution making changes based on the results of it.

With NSSE, colleges and universities can put their best foot forward in a way they might not have been able to in the past. Many institutions are frustrated with college rankings such as U.S. News & World Report’s and some have even begun boycotting them, Hopkins says.

“Those of us that follow higher education are horrified by the way that data is sometimes used,” she says. “If you’re enrollment is falling, you tend to have more faculty than you need and that’s a good thing. The numbers that feed into those rankings sometimes imply that something other than a good thing is going on.”

Also thanks to the NSSE going public, parents and their children going through the college selection and application process have an additional tool to help them evaluate schools.

Hopkins says it’s the kind of information that’s extremely useful for students who might be wondering what to expect from college, and although the questions are subjective, the data collected is “worth looking at. It’s a pretty good way to decide if the school you’re looking at really does offer the kind of experience you’re looking to get.”

Jimmie Gahagan, USC’s assistant vice provost for student engagement, says he doesn’t think the NSSE will be used in the way college rankings such as U.S. News & World Report’s are used anytime soon.

“I do think it will be meaningful to them [potential college students],” Gahagan says. “It will be a piece of the conversation certainly, but I don’t think it will move into the area of rankings. But it does show how involved students are on campus and I think there will be more conversations toward that end.”

While USC Columbia does not post its scores online, Gahagan says the campus has participated in the NSSE since 2001. Gahagan would not disclose the scores of the Columbia campus. He says it compared well to institutions of similar size and type.

“One of the questions [on the survey] is, ‘Have you participated in a service learning project?’” he says. “USC students are higher than their peers in the nation in that area.”

For more information and to check out how other colleges around South Carolina did on the NSSE, visit www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-04-nsse-how-to_N.htm.