What is The National Survey of Student Engagement Telling Us?
Concern that American college students may not be learning much during their years in school is not new; nor is it confined to think tanks like the Pope Center. Back in 1999, the Pew Charitable Trusts made a grant to Indiana University to develop a means of probing the question of student achievement. What emerged was the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a program designed to measure the extent to which students are active participants in their education. If there is evidence that students are really engaged in their college work, that is at least indicative of educational progress and vice versa. NSSE accumulates data by sending a questionnaire to a large number of college freshmen and seniors. For the 2006 survey, more than one million were sent to students in the US and Canada. The schools those students attend range from the most prestigious to the least. Institutions, however, have to choose to participate and not all do. In North Carolina, all of the UNC campuses par
