SATISFACTION

Institutional Goal:

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

Commentary:

The most recent feedback on student satisfaction comes from the 2000/01 Survey of First Year Students conducted by 26 universities under the auspices of the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium. The level of satisfaction of Carleton students is compared to the other participating institutions groups 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.

90% of Carleton students indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "I am satisfied with my decision to attend this university." This compares with 90% for the 6 universities in the Comprehensive group and 91% overall.
82% of Carleton students were satisfied with the quality of teaching (agree/strongly agree). This compares to 83% for the Comprehensive category and 86% overall.
The most important reasons for selecting Carleton were "specific career-related program" (25%); "offered financial assistance/scholarship" (16%); "quality of academic programs" (11%) and "wanted to live close to home" (11%). Overall for the 26 universities, the most important reasons were "specific career-related program " (20%); "quality of academic program" (17%); "wanted to live close to home" (13%) and "university has a good reputation" (9%).

The survey was conducted over the winter of 2000/01. 26 universities supplied a random sample of 600 first year students. The overall response rate was 48% and for Carleton it was 50%.

Methodological Note:

Results from the 2000/01 Survey of First Years Students by the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium have been used to measure student satisfaction. The survey was conducted using random samples of students who were in a first level Bachelor's program in 2000/01 and who had entered university directly from high school or CEGEP. A total of 26 Canadian universities of varying sizes participated in the Survey.

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 26 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. Response sample sizes: Carleton - 300; Primarily Undergraduate - 2650; Comprehensive Universities - 1738; Medical Doctoral - 2705; all universities - 7093.

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 2.5%. So, for example, if we repeated this survey, we would expect to find that the true percentage of Carleton students who are satisfied with their decision to attend this university would fall within the range of 84.7% to 95.3%, 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 87.5% to 92.5%.