The 50-page study gives detailed data on how 249 university deans, provosts, administrative and academic department heads and other leaders perceive the university office of student assessment, or similar office that performs these functions. It also looks specifically at the level of support among university leaders for spending on assessment personnel, standardized testing, assessment training for faculty and other assessment tools.
Respondents were drawn from major research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
Data in the report is broken out by a broad range of criteria including: age, gender, academic title, and compensation level of respondent, and university ranking, public/private status and country of origin of the respondents affiliated institution. The sample is comprised of deans, provosts, chancellors, trustees, vice presidents, upper level administration directors, academic department heads, and distinguished professors.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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In general, the most highly ranked schools were for the most part more critical of the assessment office than were their lower ranked peers; for those from top 40 universities, less than 20% considered assessment office performance to be good or excellent while 50% thought it only acceptable.
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The older the interviewee, the more likely that they were to feel that their faculty thought of the university's student assessment effort as important or very important.
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By country, the greatest sentiment for the university to spend more on student assessment was in Australia/New Zealand where 28% of leaders interviewed wanted to spend more.
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36.55% wanted the university to spend about the same that it had been spending on assessment training for university faculty.