Educational Quality Assessment

In this section we provide evidence of educational quality at Kalamazoo College garnered from surveys, direct measures of student learning, and datasets that reveal characteristics of our students and alumni.

The transformative power of a Kalamazoo College education is reflected in a variety of indicators. Senior scores on the “Level of Academic Challenge” and “Enriching Educational Experiences” benchmarks of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) are consistently well above those of our Carnegie peers. In successive administrations of the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), a direct measure of skills in written communication, problem solving, and analytical reasoning, Kalamazoo seniors have performed “above expected” relative to their SAT scores, and the degree of change in CLA scores from the first to the fourth year places Kalamazoo College in the 99th percentile among colleges and universities nationally that have participated in the CLA. Kalamazoo College also ranks 14th among the nation’s four-year liberal arts colleges for the percentage of graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees, and is the only Michigan college or university among the top 25 institutions nationally.

Links to current evidence are as follows:

1. To what degree do our students attain intended learning outcomes?

• 2011 Breadth Poster
• 2012 Breadth Analysis
• 2012 HLC Presentation on Breadth at Kalamazoo College
• 2012 Focus Groups on Breadth (password protected for internal use only)
• Results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
• 2012 CIRP-CSS, NSSE & the CLA (password protected for internal use only)
• Baccalaureate Origins of Doctorate Degrees
• 2005 K-Plan Outcomes Study

2. What are patterns of student retention and graduation?

• Retention/graduation rates on College Navigator
• 2012 HIP Study Findings (password protected for internal use only)

3. What are perceptions of and opinions about the College’s learning environments?

• Results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
• 2012 CIRP-CSS, NSSE & the CLA (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 CIRP-CSS compared with 2010 CIRP-CSS (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 CIRP-YFCY (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 CIRP-TFS (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 Presentation on Focus Groups on the SIP Process (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 Report on SIP Focus Group Findings (password protected for internal use only)
• 2010 Presentation on Focus Groups on Student-Faculty Interaction (password protected for internal use only)
• 2009 Kalamazoo College Pre-Culture Audit Report (password protected for internal use only)
• 2012 Kalamazoo College Post-Culture Audit Report (password protected for internal use only)
• 2005 Senior Year Committee Report (password protected for internal use only)
• 2005 K-Plan Outcomes Study

4. Does the College have an appropriate “mix” of academic majors and programs?

• Academic majors and programs
• 2008 DITF-R Report (password protected for internal use only)
• 2005 K-Plan Outcomes Study
• 2012 Kalamazoo College Self-Study Report