Summary of Student Surveys on COVID

We are keeping an updated table summarizing the various COVID surveys capturing student sentiment and plans for Fall 2020 enrollment.

These surveys seek to get a better picture of the student experience this spring, providing potential insight into the fall. The table below lists the organizations that conducted each survey; the links to the results from each survey; the month of survey administration (or the latest month with significant response numbers for open surveys); the number of each survey’s respondents (n), which ranged from 500 to 76,000; and each survey’s scope, which ranged from individual institutions to the entire world.

You can sort the table on each of the column headers.

The organizations identified fairly different goals, methodologies and levels of protocol in their efforts to collect data. For example, Simpson Scarborough’s survey was “designed to isolate [student] decisions and/or plans being made as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The Ithaka S+R survey was meant to “address the pressing needs of the community as colleges and universities have pivoted to online instruction.” EY-Parthenon’s goal was to “provide insight to colleges and universities to help them improve remote engagement and learning for students.”

Equally important, we need to know who participated–and who did not participate–in answering these surveys.

• For Simpson Scarborough, almost two-thirds (64%) of the college student respondents were White, and over three-quarters (77%) were not in the first generation in their family to go to college.
• In Georgetown’s survey, two-thirds (67%) of the respondents were graduate students. As Daniels et al. noted about their Georgetown survey, “these kinds of surveys are not representative of any group of students.”
• The Ithaka S+R team reached over 15,000 students at 21 different institutions, including 8 schools that grant graduate degrees, 8 baccalaureate colleges, and 4 associate’s colleges. They described a robust methodology for data collection and analysis, including cross-tabulations by demographic characteristics and by other relevant survey questions. The high number of respondents may help counteract a less diverse population overall – e.g., while 75% of respondents were white, almost 4,000 respondents were non-white.
• Several other groups disaggregated their results in useful ways as well – e.g., HEDS compared responses by ethnicity and/or gender (including people who identify as non-binary), and brightspot provided multiple ways for students to identify themselves (including first-generation (28% of respondents), low-income (20%), 25 or older (24%), part-time student (19%), with a disability (9%)). [NOTE: I was not able to easily find the numbers or percentages of respondents in each attribute category for HEDS.]
• The Student Senate for the California Community Colleges (SSCCC) was one of the few organizations to acknowledge directly that the students we need to hear from most may not have responded to their survey. In their webinar to discuss their survey results last week, SSCCC President Danny Thirakul said this was possibly due to more pressing issues or obligations (e.g., being an essential worker, caring for family), as well as inadequate access to technology or the Internet.
• Conversely, Skyline College had “balanced representation across all ethnic groups, international, low income, first generation to college, past online learning experience,” but degree/transfer seeking students were overrepresented in the sample.

Looking at the surveys collectively, one thing jumps out: What institutions say they are or will be doing does not always match up to the support students say they are getting or the support students say they need.