Why Do A Survey?
A dozen reasons to survey your students:
- Provide your department feedback about its performance in meeting its goals
- Design management policy and practices that match students needs
- Establish budget priorities and target operational expenditures
- Justify student service budget requests with documented student needs
- Evaluate the performance of housing and dining service vendors
- Use survey results as performance contracting criteria
- Calibrate housing and dining processes to maximize effectiveness
- Gauge receptivity of proposed or actual program or policy changes
- Inform contemplated changes in student service policies or programs
- Evaluate the performance and training needs of front line student service workers
- Identify operational trouble spots and target remedial actions
- Evaluate the success of newly implemented student service policies and practices
All of which in one way or another allows your institution to provide students with a high quality campus life within your institution’s resources!
There are many reasons to survey your students, but they are all related in one way or another to the basic goal of providing students with the highest quality campus life possible within the constraints of your institution’s resources. But the student service stakeholders extend well beyond just the current students. They include your institution’s senior officers – deans and presidents – who have responsibility for the students’ overall well being, the academic faculty whose instructional goals are affected by the quality of student life, the parents of current students many of whom are the main source of your department’s revenues, and of course there are the future students who will make their decisions tomorrow about where to apply to study based upon the reputation your institution builds today.
Oiling the squeaky wheel can be bad management!
Current students are of course you most immediate and direct stakeholders, and you want to provide them with a high quality experience and to achieve the highest possible customer satisfaction and do so with data driven, rational processes and at the lowest cost. It is therefore important to listen to your students, properly translate what it means and effectively share what they are saying with all your institution’s stakeholders, working toward common goals. Typically you hear only the extreme complaints. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but that is not an effective way to manage scarce resources to your stakeholders’ best advantage. To manage effectively, you must have objective and relevant information, so it is essential to listen to all of your stakeholders, especially all of your students, not just the squeaky wheels. In short, effective management requres data driven managerial decision making. Competent surveying can provide the data you need.
Data driven decision making requires objective, relevant data
But your student population changes about 25% every year and almost completely every four years. Information can become stale if it is too historic and lead to sub-optimal, even disastrous management decisions. Regularly refreshing the information upon which you design and manage student service programs and processes is essential to successful management. Conducting an annual survey of your students is a highly recommended investment. If properly done, it will bring your institution significant returns.