Success at Calbright doesn’t just mean getting students in the door.. It means helping our students achieve their education and career goals. Do they tell us they’re better off after they went to Calbright than they were before?
In the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the answer appears to be: yes.
Results from the most recent student and alumni surveys are still being compiled, but according to the data we have:
- More than 70% of students surveyed said that Calbright had helped them progress in their goals,
- 91% would recommend Calbright to a friend or family member,
- 76% say that they are satisfied with their experience at Calbright and what they’ve learned
This isn’t just a one time survey. Calbright is meticulous about maintaining a constant stream of feedback. As Calbright’s 2023-2024 Milestone Report notes:
The College uses surveys, interviews, focus groups, and more as sources of student feedback, collecting data throughout the year to gauge student and alumni satisfaction and to learn from their experiences with Calbright’s programs, systems, and services. In addition to the Annual Student Experience Survey, day-to-day work of success counselors, instructors, and other support teams who engage with students directly, the College distributes two other surveys at key moments throughout a student’s Calbright journey: the End-of-Term Survey and the Alumni Survey. Information from these surveys is used to help different teams design new solutions or improve systems and practices.
That feedback isn’t just used to tell us how we’re doing: It’s used to make changes that students say would help them. As Calbright Learning and Experience Designer Jessica Schaid said:
“I use all the data Calbright has to find places where students are struggling, where something isn’t working. Data tells us where we need to look. But that’s just the beginning of the process, because then you need to ask: why are they struggling? What’s going on? So next you dig into it, have conversations with the faculty, see what students are saying in different contexts, compare it with different areas of the curriculum, so you can really paint a picture of the experience students are having. And that’s when you make decisions about how to improve it for students.”
Because of Calbright’s unique academic structure, we’re able to make those changes far faster than conventional colleges. Calbright Instructional Designer Shannon Reynolds says it’s one of the things she’s most proud of in her job:
“At Calbright you can have a conversation about something that isn’t working for students, get a quick approval from your team, and then fix it. Whereas in conventional colleges you have a conversation, then you have a group, then you have a meeting, and then a working session, and then you write a memo about it, schedule a lot more meetings, ask ‘What would the process be?’ and before you’ve even started the students are gone!”
“Calbright,” she adds, “is constantly improving. It never stops, it never settles.”
Our survey data tells us it’s working for our students and their careers. Students like Maurice, like Binh, like Paul, and like Alicia, all agree.
