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National Survey of Student Engagement: CU-Boulder 2000

Summary of major findings - by major

In general, all seniors report high levels of satisfaction with their UCB education. The majority of seniors in all majors give high ratings to their entire educational experience, and almost all would attend UCB again. This is particularly true for aerospace majors, who report the highest level of academic quality in the major and who are most favorable about attending UCB again.

There is considerable variance across majors in a number of scales. Engineering majors rank lower than all other majors on acquiring a broad general education; but rank highest, not unexpectedly, on information technology skill and computer use. Business and engineering majors outrank A&S majors in emphasis on practical academics, including acquiring work-related knowledge and working with others outside of class. While most engineering and business majors include a senior experience, relatively few A&S seniors indicate that they have participated in such an experience, history and international affairs being the exception. Participation in study abroad is quite variable among the majors, with international affairs and finance as the two with seniors most likely to have studied abroad.

Quality of academic advising varies widely across majors. Aerospace engineering is a star on all advising dimensions (i.e., accuracy, availability, and quality); its ratings far exceed those of any other major across all the colleges. International affairs also scores high on advising, though not quite to the level achieved by aerospace. On the other hand, communications, management, and computer science all score lowest in their respective colleges.

Seniors' ratings of advising in the college or department are highly related to their rating of the university's general responsiveness to academic problems. This indicates that students' perceptions of the university as a whole are closely tied to their advising experiences in their major and/or college. Perceptions of advising are also tied to views of university administration in particular. Seniors in aerospace and international affairs ranked highest among majors on relationship with administration; communications and computer science ranked lowest.

It is likely that good advising translates into general, positive feelings about the university's responsiveness and administrative support. This hypothesis is supported by two findings. First, advising items on the NSSE are highly related to items assessing overall satisfaction with the university. Second, in the 1999 UCB undergraduate survey, the most popular response to the question "What things could the university do to make you feel it cared for you as an individual?" was improve advising. Improvements in academic advising for all students could have far reaching benefits for students and the university alike.

Emphasis on development of cognitive skills is quite variable across majors. English scores highest among all majors on emphasis placed on critical thinking and analysis, and scores highest among A&S majors on analyzing basic elements, synthesizing and organizing ideas, and applying theories and concepts. Sociology scores lowest of all the A&S majors on many of these same dimensions, and in particular, on analyzing basic elements, synthesizing and organizing ideas, and making judgments regarding value.

NSSE 2000 Table of Contents

Last revision 04/26/02

cb - l:\ir\survey\nsse\00\report\ByMajor_summary text2.doc, last updated 5/08/01