AAC&U News | December 2003 | Facts & Figures

New Data on Student Engagement Reveals Both Promising and Disturbing News

Results of this year's National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the newer Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) were released in November and reveal both promising and disturbing trends in how engaged in their learning today's college students really are. The NSSE study, "Converting Data Into Action: Expanding the Boundaries of Institutional Improvement," provides data drawn from 185,000 first-year and senior students at 649 four-year colleges and universities. It measures students' own assessment of how engaged they are in their learning and is based on five benchmarks including: 1) level of academic challenge; 2) active and collaborative learning; 3) student-faculty interaction; 4) enriching educational experiences; and 5) supportive campus environment.

Modeled on the older NSSE surveys, the newer Community College Survey of Student Engagement provides data drawn from 65,300 students at 93 community colleges. Unlike the NSSE survey of four-year institutions, participants in the CCSSE must agree to make data about their institutions public. The CCSSE survey is also constructed around five benchmarks: 1) active learning; 2) student-faculty interaction; 3) student effort; 4) level of academic challenge; and 5) support for learners. The CCSSE reveals some interesting findings that suggest that community college students are more engaged than their four-year college counterparts on some benchmarks (e.g. collaborative learning), while on other benchmarks (e.g. student-faculty interaction), they are less engaged.

FINDINGS

National Survey of Student Engagement

Eighty-seven percent of all students surveyed rated their college experience "good" or "excellent."
About two-thirds of seniors participated in community service or volunteer work at least once during college. Women (75 percent) are more likely than men (62 percent) to do community service or volunteer work.
A majority of seniors (58 percent) report that they completed a culminating senior experience. Seventy-two percent report that they participated in a practicum, internship, field experience, or co-op experience.
Almost nine of ten students (87 percent) report that their peers at least "sometimes" copy and paste information from the Web or Internet into reports/papers without citing the source.
Men are disproportionately under-engaged, particularly in the areas of academic challenge and enriching educational experiences.
More than two-fifths of first-year students "never" discuss ideas from their classes or readings with a faculty member outside the classroom.
Less than half of seniors frequently have serious conversations with students from different racial or ethnic backgrounds.
Only about 13 percent of full-time students spent more than 25 hours a week preparing for class, the approximate number that faculty members say is needed to do well in college.
More than half of all part-time students (51 percent of first-year students, 61 percent of seniors) work off-campus more than 20 hours per week.

Community College Survey of Student Engagement

Forty-eight percent of community college students worked with classmates on projects "often" or "very often," which is six percentage points higher than first-year students at four-year colleges.
Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of two-year college students report that they ask questions or contribute to class discussions either "often" or "very often" compared with 59 percent of first-year students at four-year colleges and universities.
About 45 percent of community college students discussed grades or assignments with a professor either "often" or "very often," compared with 50 percent of first-year and 60 percent of seniors at four-year institutions.
Forty-five percent of full-time community college students report working more than 20 hours per week off-campus.
Nearly a third (32 percent) of community college students surveyed work more than 30 hours per week.
More than one-fifth (21 percent) of community college student respondents have children living at home; 29 percent spend eleven hours or more per week caring for dependents.
Only 12 percent of full-time community college students said they spent 21 or more hours per week studying for a class, and seventy-three percent said they came to class unprepared at least some of the time. Seventy percent of community college students, however, report that their colleges encouraged them to spend significant amounts of time studying.

Integrative Learning at Four-Year and Community Colleges

To estimate the degree to which students took part in activities that provide opportunities to integrate their curricular and co-curricular experiences, NSSE created a scale of integration using six NSSE questions. Integration is a very strong predictor of engagement, satisfaction, and self-reported gains. For instance, the higher the integration score, the more likely a student is to: interact with faculty, experience diversity, and report their courses emphasize higher-order thinking.
Almost 87 percent of seniors at four-year colleges frequently integrate ideas or information from various sources into papers or projects.
About four-fifths of seniors at four-year colleges said their classes placed a good deal of emphasis on applying theories or concepts to practical problems.
Women, seniors, and students attending Baccalaureate Liberal Arts Colleges tend to engage more frequently in activities that require integration.
Traditional-age students, student-athletes, and students living on-campus are less engaged in integrative activities at four-year colleges.
Sixty percent of community college students surveyed reported that they "often" or "very often" worked on a paper or project that required integrating ideas or information from various sources.
Business and Engineering Majors at four-year institutions are well below their counterparts in other fields in the frequency with which they engage in integrative activities.

For the complete findings from the NSSE 2003 report, see www.iub.edu/~nsse. For the complete findings from the CCSSE 2003 report, see www.ccsse.org.

For information about the project, Integrative Learning: Opportunities to connect, co-sponsored by AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, see www.aacu.org/integrative_learning.

DID YOU KNOW?

Women at single-sex colleges are more engaged than their counterparts at other types of institutions.
More than a third of all seniors at four-year institutions only "occasionally" get prompt feedback from faculty members.
African American, Latino/a, and American Indian students at community colleges report higher aspirations than their white peers.
Community college minority students planned to transfer to a four-year institution at a higher rate (57 percent) than did white students (43 percent).
Community college minority students report higher levels of interaction with professors and better use of academic advising than did their white counterparts.