SATISFACTION

Institutional Goal:

• Ensure that students have the best possible experience with programs and services while at Carleton.



Commentary:




Feedback on student satisfaction is available by reference to the 1999/00 Survey of Graduating Students conducted by 22 universities under the auspices of the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium. The level of satisfaction of Carleton students is compared to the other participating institutions grouped into three categories of institutions as used in Maclean's Magazine (Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive, Medical Doctoral) - in this categorization Carleton falls within the Comprehensive category as it has a relatively large graduate program but does not have a medical program.



• Carleton has high satisfaction ratings on most measures of student satisfaction in the survey. The levels of satisfaction tend to be on the high end as compared to other universities in the Comprehensive category but the error rate inherent in the survey does not indicate statistically significant differences in most cases.
• The overall pattern of responses on the contribution of faculty to the university experience indicates that Carleton students have a higher level of satisfaction with faculty than at other Comprehensive universities.
• The assessment of the quality of instruction tends to be higher than other Comprehensive universities, however, the data indicates some concern among Carleton students regarding professors' knowledge of career opportunities and Carleton's efforts in making career information available.




Methodological Note:

Results from the 1999/00 Survey of Undergraduates by the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium have been used to measure student satisfaction. The survey was conducted using random samples of students who were potential graduates from first-level baccalaureate programs in 22 universities across the country. Students in professional schools such as medicine, dentistry and law were excluded from the samples.

Results are presented for three categories of participating universities (based on Maclean's groupings):

Primarily Undergraduate universities offer primarily undergraduate studies, and have a relatively small student population. Comprehensive universities (including Carleton) consist of universities offering both undergraduate and graduate studies and tend to have medium size student populations. Medical Doctoral universities offer both graduate and undergraduate degrees, have medical schools, and tend to be the largest institutions in terms of student population.

Each of the participating 22 universities randomly selected a sample of 600 students who were potentially eligible to graduate at the end of the academic year, and were in most cases in the second term of the 1999/00 academic year. Sample sizes: Carleton - 300; Primarily Undergraduate - 2487; Comprehensive Universities - 2401; Medical Doctoral - 1500; all universities - 6388.

Approximate error rates at the 95% confidence level are listed and should be taken into account in interpreting the table. Given the sample sizes and response rates, the results for Carleton are accurate within plus or minus 5.3% and those for all Comprehensive universities are accurate within plus or minus 2.2%. So, for example, if we repeated this survey, we would expect to find that the true percentage of Carleton students who would recommend Carleton to others would fall within the range of 84.6% and 95.2%, 19 times out of 20. Similarly, on the same question, we would expect to find that the true percentage of students at Comprehensive universities would fall within the range of 85% and 89.4% of students.