Welcome to my blog
As the first entry on my blog, I wanted to let you know what I hope it will achieve. There are many ways for me to engage with students, faculty and staff. Since I arrived this summer, I have been trying to meet with as many of you, individually and in groups, as possible. I view this blog as just one more means to keep in touch and receive feedback. I look forward to your comments.
Globe & Mail’s Canadian University Report
In this first blog, I wanted to talk about the Globe & Mail’s recently released Canadian University Report. This report surveys students at most of Canada’s universities on topics that are of interest to students. By asking samples of students approximately 100 questions on topics such as their degree of satisfaction with the quality of education at their universities, recreation and food services, class size, environmental commitment and student residences, the survey takes the results and converts them into point totals and then assigns letter grades to these totals. This survey differs from the annual Maclean’s survey in that this grades and ranks universities on the basis of student opinion and perception, not on ‘inputs’ such as the size of the university budget, the number of professors holding PhDs or the number of grants received by faculty. Although we might disagree with the approach or the methods used for these assessments, they do provide us with one measure of student opinion and they should be taken seriously.
UPEI getting bigger, changing categories
Up until this year, UPEI was in the ‘very small’ category of universities (< 4,000 students) in this annual survey. We have now been moved into the ‘small’ category (4,000 to 12,000 students). This means we are no longer grouped with other Maritime universities such as Mt. Allison and Acadia and are instead evaluated in comparison to universities such as Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, and UNB. This might influence the ranking that emerges on different questions.
I should say at this stage that I view these assessments a little like a buffet table. You browse the offerings, trying to sort out what looks interesting but not completely sure how it might taste.
How UPEI compares
In most of the categories, our students rate UPEI “in the middle of the pack” in comparison to the ratings provided by the students at the other 19 universities in the ‘small university’ category. In absolute terms, UPEI students indicate that they are more satisfied with our small class sizes (A) as well as the quality of education they are receiving, the level of student-faculty interaction and the ease of course registration (all A- grades). Our lowest grades came in our student’s assessment of our food services, where we received a C grade, and in course availability/variety (C-). However, even these results might be a little misleading. For example, although our student’s evaluation of our food services is a cause for concern, we are actually tied for 3rd highest score in this category. What this means is that students right across Canada are generally dissatisfied with the food services at their universities.
In our grouping of 20 universities, our students rate us relatively more satisfied with the residences, the library, recreation and athletics, buildings & facilities and the ease they have in registering for courses. Although we aren’t near the bottom of the pack in any of the categories, our students rank us relatively worse in Course Availability/Variety (a C+ where the lowest score is a C-).
So what does all this mean and how might it be used?
As I noted above this is just one piece of information that can be used to shape policy. It has to be combined with other information and priorities. However, we have responded to some of the relatively low scores in the past. For example, a score of B in satisfaction with Student Services in 2009 resulted in greater attention being paid to the Jumpstart program, the Diversity Office and New Student Orientation. The next year our students gave us a B+ in this area. Of course, this is an imprecise relationship and there are many other factors that might influence student satisfaction but this is one means of listening to our students.
Last Word
My last word for this post is to let students know that early in 2011 we will be participating in a more comprehensive student survey. This exercise, sometimes referred to as “Nessie” or NSSE for the National Survey of Student Engagement, will be much more robust and useful than the Globe & Mail survey. As the survey date draws closer I’ll talk more about the value of participating in this survey for the lives of students, both now and in the future.