wow, this is interesting. could you elaborate more on what's going on with the failure rates? why have your colleagues been dropping out? and is there anyone with a positive experience from worcester?
I copied and pasted this directly out of the universities self study report. It is public information. If anyone wants the full thing it is on the schools website or contact me and I will send it to you. The results are really disturbing, but I'll let you guys decide. Like I said they are on the website if anyone says I am making they up.
In the spring of 2006, the Student Affairs Division administered the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) to 1248 students across all three campuses to determine College strengths and challenges in achieving student satisfaction with responsiveness to student needs. The SSI calculates performance gaps between the importance rating of a specific aspect of college life and the satisfaction rating a student assigns to that same aspect of college life. Noel-Levitz staff indicated to MCPHS that East coast health sciences institutions typically detect higher performance gaps than other institutions. The typical range of performance gaps for seven peer institutions was 1.0-2.0. MCPHS identified any performance gaps of 2.0 or greater as institutional challenges requiring attention. Based upon this survey, academic course content, knowledgeable faculty, campus safety and security, and well maintained facilities appear to be strengths across all three campuses. The
challenges that students identified across all campuses are concern for the individual student by the institution, and quality of student experience as influenced by enrollment growth and service delivery (Boston), policy enforcement and instruction (Worcester), and student government and programming challenges (Manchester). Differences among campuses in other strengths and challenges were identified and will be utilized in developing steps to address institutional challenges students have identified. The summary table below shows campus performance gap means in comparison to the performance gap mean of benchmark institutions (SSI Executive Summary and results in the workroom).
Summary of SSI Results - Performance Gaps
Boston (n=931)
Worcester (n=254) Manchester (n=63) Comparison Group
Instructional Effectiveness 1.97
2.54 1.99 1.18
Safety & Security 2.16
2.26 1.78 1.64
Academic Advising 1.85
2.05 1.53 1.14
Registration Effectiveness 2.18
2.09 1.82 1.38
Concern for the Individual 2.15
2.74 1.76 1.22
Recruitment and FinancialAid 2.34
2.01 1.86 1.52
Campus Climate 2.07
2.92 2.19 1.25
Campus Support Services 1.63
1.94 1.99 0.84
Student Centeredness 2.15
3.21 2.22 1.18
Service Excellence 1.90
2.46 1.86 1.26
Campus Life 1.63
2.30 2.26 1.03
HERI 01-02 data indicated that 45% of MCPHS faculty were "at odds" with campus administrators compared to 19% of nationally-polled faculty. By 04-05 this perception had dropped to 30.6% of College faculty, compared to 14% of all respondents nationally. Faculty response to the IEC survey statement that the College administration fosters adequate communication, and that the organization of the College fosters adequate communication were 35% agree, 34% disagree for the former statement, and 39% agree, 39% disagree for the latter. However, with regard to the statement that policy decisions are made with appropriate input from faculty, and that such decisions are made with an understanding of the academic issues involved, the IEC responses were 23% agree, 51% disagree and 24% agree, 48% disagree, respectively. These data may reflect concern with the rapid rate of growth at the College and changing expectations of faculty productivity and accountability. In addition, these data indicate that MCPHS has not completely overcome the communication concerns of NEASC in 1997. Vision 2008 provides another step toward improved communication in its Strategic Initiative #1, Diverse Perspectives, One Vision. This interpretation is supported by written comments from the 2006 IEC survey (combined responses of administration, faculty and staff). A summary of these indicates that perceived areas of institutional strength include the people who work here ("dedicated faculty, staff, & administration") and quality of academic programs. Perceived areas of concern include communication (general, as well as faculty and staff input regarding decision making) and rate of growth (implementing and changing programs too quickly; understaffing; inadequate space – classroom, office and student housing). Communication has been identified as an institutional challenge since the 1997 NEASC site visit and through the recent strategic planning process. Efforts to improve internal and external communication are described in
Standard 10.
