By Heather Danforth
This year, for the third time, BYU will participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement, which ranks universities based on the experiences of their students.
The Center for Postsecondary Research and Planning, located at Indiana University, is conducting the survey of randomly selected students at about 365 colleges and universities across the country.
'There aren''t a lot of opportunities to give BYU a chance to get benchmark information to compare to our peer institutions, and this is one of those avenues,' said Danny Olsen, director of institutional assessment and analysis at BYU, about why the university participates in the survey.
The survey was mailed to 1,500 randomly selected first-year students and seniors last week. It takes about 10 minutes to fill out, according to Olsen.
The survey is sponsored by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, but BYU pays about $5,000 in expenses to have the survey conducted at BYU each year.
'We pay a little more (than other universities) because we pay for an oversample,' Olsen said. 'We have more surveys sent out, because we have a larger student body and we want to have a sufficient number of surveys coming back to allow us to create reports for our colleges.'
BYU had a high response rate to the survey the previous two times it was conducted, Olsen said, with 70 percent responding last year compared to a national response rate of only 42 percent.
Reports of the survey results will be returned to BYU following the survey, and the university will use them to determine areas of strength and areas that need improvement, Olsen said.
Olsen''s office will then create reports for each of the university''s colleges.
'It''s a pretty well-established study,' Olsen said.
Students are surveyed on the level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences and supportive campus environment.
'BYU does quite well on the rankings,' Olsen said. BYU receives particularly high marks on its level of academic challenge and its supportive campus environment.
The survey is a new way of looking at higher education ranking, said Bob Gonyea, research analyst for the NSSE project.
'Before, what was mostly discussed was resources and the reputation of a school,' he said. 'What this survey measures is what students actually do and say about their institutions.'
Olsen hopes the surveys will be used to determine ways to improve the quality of undergraduate education at BYU. The survey results currently provide information to support programs BYU is already implementing, he said.
The university intends to participate in the survey every year.
'One of the major premises behind the survey is that, unlike other college ranking systems like U.S. News, this study doesn''t just look at who students are when they come in, but what they''re doing when they get here,' Olsen said.