terrapinsanity.com

Today’s Washington Post article reveals to the DC Metro area one of the little known measures of campus quality, the National Survey of Student Engagement. There are many yardsticks for ranking schools, but this is one of the few that is based on a serious effort to broaden survey respondents to include students, not just campus leaders.

So what are UMCP’s NSSE scores?

If they were good, then you’d have heard about them already. They aren’t. In fact, they are pretty poor.

Leadership has these results broken down by college and even individual units, but treats them like they are Strategic Air Command’s launch codes – a critical state secret.

The last round of results quashed prospects of our participation in other surveys. In effect, questions we know the answer to need not be asked! The prospect is that we won’t indulge many other research projects until there is some expectation of scoring well. Apparently assessments are for advertising – not illumination.