The 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement numbers are out (go here to pull up the pdf), and once again they display some depressing statistics on student-faculty engagement.
When asked to rate the quality of “Your relationships with faculty members,” the results were quite encouraging. The scale went from 1 to 7, with 1 representing “Unavailable, Unhelpful, Unsympatehtic” and 7 representing the opposite, “Available, Helpful, Sympathetic.” Fully 70 percent of first-year students gave their teachers a 5 or better, and seniors raised the tally to 76 percent. Only 11 percent of first-year students and 10 percent of seniors scored their teachers 3 or lower.
That means that students generally find faculty ready to help them outside of class, guide them with a thesis, an interpretation, a question or confusion, and talk about most any other matters personal or intellectual students wish to raise.
Why is it, then, that when it comes to discussing the class contents with faculty outside of class the contact hours sink so low? When asked how often they actually “Discussed ideas from your readings or classes with faculty members outside of class,” 38 percent of first-year students answered “Never,” and 39 percent answered “Sometimes” (“sometimes” signifies, perhaps, a few times a semester?). Seniors didn’t do much better — a dismaying result given that seniors have closer relations with faculty in terms of career and intellectual interests. 28 percent of them chose “Never” and 44 percent of them chose “Sometimes.”
That means that 77 percent of first-year students and 72 percent of seniors have pretty much no intellectual engagement with their teachers once the bell rings and they leave the classroom. They may like their teachers, but they don’t care much to share ideas and test opinions and take suggestions beyond the basic requirements of the course. Faculty members, for them, aren’t intellectual resources, we may assume. They are graders.
Indeed, when it came time to “discussing grades or assignments with an instructor,” the numbers changed drastically. The “Never” score for first-year students went from 38 percent to 8 percent, while for seniors it went from 28 percent to 5 percent.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with students talking about grades with professors. But it sure would be nice if the discrepancy between grade talk and idea talk weren’t so large.
