Noel-Levitz recently published a study regarding student satisfaction in higher education over the past 15 years. This intrigued me because 15 years ago, I was a college freshmen , stepping foot on a college campus for the first-time. At that time, 1996, I was a kid ready for a challenge, ready to grow up and ready to learn. Never did I consider myself a consumer of a college education, nor was I aware of what my own "satisfaction" of my experience in college was or was not. Fast forward to 2011, where students and their parents are the epitome of "customer" and the way in which a student is recruited and retained is based on customer satisfaction. Did the student and family have a positive interaction with an employee? Did they find that our school offered them the best deal on college tuition? What is the value that the student is getting for the amount of money they are paying to attend a particular institution? These things never crossed my mind at 18 years old.
The results of this study are that: 1)students are still most concerned with their academic experience above anything else; 2) in general, student satisfaction of 4 year public institutions has increased; 3) the topic of financial aid has increased in level of importance in a students decision to attend a particular institution; 4) there have been shifts in satisfaction regarding billing and financial aid service over the last 15 years; and 5) there has been steady increase in the importance and satisfaction regarding campus culture.
Honestly, the reason this article/report stood out to me is because I find it irrelevant (ironic, I know). It makes we wonder what the purpose of this study was supposed to have been. I don't think it is surprising that the items related to financing college are rated poor...the economy is terrible and the cost of college tuition is out of control And, really, who cares if students are not satisfied with the amount of college tuition these days..there are not many alternatives. If you want a college degree, you need to be prepared for the inflating cost. As a recruitment administrator, I suppose what I can get out of this is just the reminder that because the cost of tuition escalates everywhere, the need for exceptional customer service is higher. Other than that.....am I missing something, are we really going to change our practices because of this information??
Not that the report was a total waste of time for me, however. Further into it, there is a section on parent and students expectations of higher education. The populayion assessed for this section are college-bound high school seniors and their parents. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their behavior in the college selection process, specifically as it relates to electronic searches. Some highlights from the results here are that students are consulting with their parents more often now than before (again, not a revolutionary discovery). What I do find helpful for my daily work is that one is five students admit to removing a college from their list of options if they had a bad experience on the school website. This tells me that we must always be mindful of what news or highlights we could be featuring on our sites, and that the navigation is smooth. Also reported are that more students are inclined to check their Facebook and Twitter accounts than their parents (again, not surprising) and they are more likely to use Facebook than Twitter for learning about colleges. Lastly, 75% of student and parents report having never read a blog from the school website.
So, I am not sure if this information would be considered controversial and worth discussion, but I am curious about how the items related to social media would effect those charged with retention. I can see how it effects those us is the world of recruitment.
The thing that immediately popped into my mind as I was reading this blog post was first generation students. It is intriguing to consider how their opinions may factor in to overall satisfaction of the college experience. Of course they have the same oppotunity as other students to do research on institutions, but that only goes so far, espcially if secondary education has not properly prepared them for what is waiting in higher education. The part about consulting parents before choosing a school specifically stood out, since the parents in this case would not have first hand experience to offer.
ReplyDeleteMichele, I think you ask an interesting question about the role of social media as a retention activity. The longer I work in retention and spend time with the data and the literature the more complex the issue gets. I think one bottom line issue with retention is that it really does come down to the classroom experience - students spend a minimum of 3 hours a week with an individual faculty member - 45 hours at a mimimum over the course of a semester. I also believe we in student affairs have a lot to contribute to our institutions' retention and to supporting our faculty. Back to your question - our institution uses social media as both a recruitment tool and a tool to engage students (not sure its what I would consider a retention tool). For instance, we actually have a very active facebook page with pretty great student involvement - is that the reason they are staying or leaving probably not. I do wonder about how those of us working in student support might consider the ways we can use technology to help students be more successful - online tutorials, after hours advising/coaching etc. and whether we are using technology effectively in this arena or not? I'm not really sure but I think it's interesting to explore - for our institution specifically because nearly 3/4 of our student body go to school part time! So, they really aren't on campus - that means that our technology has to be convenient and effective in order to be of assistance to this large population.
ReplyDeleteYou brought up some good points in this study. I would like to see the demographics of the students who were studied (how many were first gen? in-state or out of state?) I think it would make the information a little more relevant to universities. I think it's important that we recognize how much social media is being utilized when students are looking at colleges and to be aware of how we're representing ourselves over the internet.
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