The National Survey for Student Engagement published its newest findings last week, with participation from 568 colleges and universities across the country—Duke and many of its peer institutions, however, were not among them.
NSSE provides annual updates on college students’ involvement in different activities and how they spend their time. Duke, along with 30 other schools, participates instead in surveys given by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, said Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs and dean of students. COFHE counts the Ivy League schools and similar institutions, as well as top liberal arts colleges, among its constituents, while NSSE surveys a broader scope of schools.
Stephen Nowicki, dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, said COFHE surveys often contain questions similar to those on the NSSE.
“The advantage of COFHE surveys is that those comparisons are to institutions that are similar to us in terms of the kinds of students we attract and in terms of the kind of education we think we’re providing,” Nowicki said.
Jillian Kinzie, associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research and NSSE Institute, said the NSSE first originated because there was concern about the quality of undergraduate education and how colleges and universities should go about improving themselves.
Director of Institutional Research David Jamieson-Drake said his main issue with the NSSE is that its reports are focused at the institutional level as opposed to the departmental level. This presents a problem because the faculties in each department are the people who develop better methods to engage students.
“I think [the NSSE] does good in the sense that by people seeing the questions and then seeing how they do institutionally, they get a sense of what sorts of activities promote student learning,” Drake said. “But then let’s say an institution wants to improve. They would want to know which departments are doing this well and which are not doing it well. And how would they know that? They can’t.”
In response, Kinzie said that over the past three years, NSSE has been offering reports based on major or field to encourage more reporting at the departmental level.
Drake said the NSSE also seems to favor humanities classes over more technical classes based on the questions it asks, such as those related to number of essay drafts and pages of writing involved in a class.
“The ideal setting seems to be a humanities seminar, [a] small group setting where people give presentations and participate fully in discussions and there’s lots of writing,” Drake said.
Kinzie acknowledged Drake’s point as a valid concern and said the new quantitative reasoning section balances out the test more, placing less emphasis on humanities courses.
In the future, Kinzie said she hopes people will keep finding the NSSE useful and that students will also enjoy taking the survey.
“When I look at the comments that students make at the end of the survey, they will say things like, ‘This is the first time I’ve really thought about all the things that I probably should be doing [as an] undergraduate,’” Kinzie said. “Those kinds of comments are very validating in terms of striking a chord with students in the ways we want them to be reflective about the kind of education they are engaging in.”
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