Kwantlen gets grades from students

By Abby Wisemen
[co-ordinating editor]

If you felt like Kwantlen didn’t care about you, well turns out they do. In fact, they commissioned a statistics company called National Survey of Student Engagement to conduct a survey of how students felt about their experience at Kwantlen in their first year and their senior year.

Below are the results based on five questions, which are considered benchmarks of student life: Level of academic challenge, active and collaborated learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences and supportive campus environment.

Kwantlen is compared to three different sample groups: New Western: This is a group of five Universities, like Kwantlen, that have recently received university status in Western Canada. They are Capilano University, University of Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island University and Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Selected Peers: This group consists of 17 universities that were chosen by the school to be compared to. Some of the schools
include Simon Fraser, University of New Brunswick, Trent University, University of Victoria, among others.

NSSE 2010: This comparison is of all 586 schools across Canada that NSSE has surveyed.

What you’re looking at: It seems that as students move up in their education, their experience moves up with them. Senior students gave higher marks for the school in all categories but one, the supportive educational environment category.

In total, Kwantlen scored lower than the top 50 per cent of Canadian universities in all categories with first years. These are universities that according to NSSE, scored over 50 per cent in student life across Canada. In the senior years, Kwantlen made it into the top 50 per cent in two categories: level of academic challenge and active and collaborative learning. Kwantlen didn’t make it into the top 10 per cent in any category.