Expectations and engagement: How liberal arts college students compare with counterparts elsewhere

Abstract

To learn more about the relationships between students' pre-college educational experiences and their expectations for and experiences in the first college year, we turned to data collected via the newly developed Beginning College Survey of Engagement (BCSSE) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The BCSSE, a companion instrument to the NSSE, measures entering students' expectations for college (with a focus on participating in educationally purposeful activities). It also collects information about selected high school experiences. The NSSE assesses the extent to which first-year students in college engage in empirically-derived good educational practices and what they gain from their college experience. Thus, we can match entering students' responses to the BCSS with their responses to the NSSE at the end of the first year of college to obtain a more accurate picture of what students are like when they start college and what they expect of themselves and their college or university, and compare these responses to what students actually do during their first year of college. A better understanding of these phenomena will be instructive for revising pre-college socialization, orientation, and first-year experience initiatives as well as other efforts designed to enhance student learning and improve persistence and graduation rates. Because the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College is committed to exploring various facets of and promoting liberal arts educational practices and ensuring that the nature of liberal arts education is better understood, we concentrate on the expectations and experiences of students at baccalaureate liberal arts colleges compared to students at other types of colleges and universities. Three central questions guided this analysis: (1) What do liberal arts college students expect to do during their first year of study in terms of academic, social and other activities? (2) How do the expectations of liberal arts college students compare with their experiences during the first year? (3) How do the expectations and experiences of liberal arts college students compare with those of their peers at other types of institutions?