Annual Results 2020

Annual Results 2020—Engagement Insights: Survey Findings on the Quality of Undergraduate Education

Welcome to the 2020 edition of Engagement Insights, NSSE’s annual dissemination of selected research findings and institutional stories that have broad relevance to the improvement of undergraduate education.

Between November 2020 and March 2021, this page will present five data-informed treatments of important topics for higher education with special value for institutions that participated in NSSE 2020. In addition to new findings, we feature related webinars, examples of institutional use, suggestions for institutional assessment, faculty insights, and more.

A Message from the Director

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education around the world in 2020, and the impact continues...

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Did You Know?

6,000,000+students from 1,680 institutions have completed NSSE since 2000.

29state systems and 41 consortia have used NSSE for their assessment purposes.

80%of NSSE institutions have participated 4 or more times.

Survey Findings

Throughout the survey findings you’ll find brief examples on how institutions put NSSE data to use. Many more examples are documented in our series Lessons from the Field.

Two students laugh in their dorm room. — Photo courtesy of Sacred Heart University

Building a Sense of Community for All

We examined the relationships between students’ sense of belonging (three new items on the 2020 survey) with engagement, perceived gains, and persistence, and also looked at patterns related to selected student characteristics.

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A student with brightly colored hair reads a book beside a stream. — Photo courtesy of SUNY College at Oneonta

The LRCs of Advising—Listening, Respecting, and Caring

More than ever, students need academic advisors who actively listen, respect identities and cultures, and care for their well-being. We examine such perceptions of advising with students’ sense of belonging, intentions to persist, and other outcomes.

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A student examines herself in the mirror as she prepares to paint a self portrait. — Photo courtesy of Ashland University

High-Impact Practices (HIPs): Interrogating Quality and Equity

HIPs continue to be a priority for colleges and universities to boost student outcomes. We share new findings from 2020, including results from the faculty survey and from an exploration of the quality of HIPs from an equity lens.

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A campus building at night — Photo courtesy of University of the Cumberlands

Identifying the Trust Gaps Among Students

Trust in American institutions has been declining over time and higher education is not exempt from this trend. We investigate how student trust in institutions, their college or university, media, others, and civil society varies across groups.

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Entering NSSE’s Third Decade: Retrospective and Prospective

As NSSE celebrates 20 years in the field, we reflect on some of our key accomplishments and lessons about institutional assessment, and look forward to new approaches in the coming decade.

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NSSE is an invaluable source of information that colleges and universities draw on to better understand how students spend their time and what they derive from their college experience.
Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, President, Oakland University

The 2020 Administration—Responding in a Pandemic

A student wearing an Indiana t-shirt and a protective mask — Photo courtesy of Indiana University

More than 480,000 students from 601 institutions responded to the 2020 survey. Of this group, the results presented here are drawn from 343,000 first-year and senior students from 521 U.S. institutions that participated in a standard NSSE administration. The average institutional response rate was 30%—up two percentage points from 2019. NSSE 2020 participating institutions and students reflect the diversity of bachelor’s-granting colleges and universities in the US with respect to institution type, public or private control, size, region, and locale.

While COVID-19 had a profound impact on almost all colleges and universities across North America, the vast majority of schools participating in NSSE 2020 successfully collected data. Analysis revealed survey response behavior and results to be relatively unaffected. Learn more about actions taken by NSSE to minimize the pandemic’s impact, and the various analyses completed to ensure data quality.

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Annual Results 2020