The benefits of meaningful analysis of the student experience at Colorado State University

Colorado State University, as an R1 public land-grant research-oriented university with over 32,000 students, is considered one of the larger US universities.  Chad Hoseth, Assistant Vice Provost of International Affairs, helps lead a comprehensive office of international programmes including international student recruitment, international students, college services and an intensive English education abroad program, as well as supporting the broader strategic internationalisation priorities for Colorado State University (CSU). Here, he explains how the university’s use of the Etio International Student Barometer (ISB) is informing the university’s approach to enhancing their world-class student experience.

Gaining a deep understanding of the student experience.

As part of this remit, Chad has run the ISB on three occasions at CSU since 2015. After a pause during the pandemic, they ran the survey again in 2022 and have worked with the data and analysis through 2023 in order to enhance multiple aspects of the student experience.

“It's vital for us to understand the experience of international students as they come to Colorado State University - how they come to learn about CSU; what their experience is through application, admission and enrollment? What is their pre-arrival and arrival experience; and then certainly what is their experience once they get here?” 

Chad’s team prides itself on providing outstanding service throughout that cycle for their international students, but it’s really important to independently and robustly verify and affirm the accuracy of assumptions regarding that experience; and, of course, highlight where they can make continuous improvements.

“We want to authentically understand the genuine experience of students here, and the ISB has been a fabulous tool in helping us explore that, and also uncover how this varies across our different student populations.” 

It’s not unusual for universities to gauge the temperature of their student experience themselves, and many ISB-participating institutions run their own surveys alongside the ISB, but for Chad, there’s a real benefit in working with an external partner with the experience of running such surveys. It also helps to have that independent body gathering the results on behalf of the university in order to receive more authentic feedback.  

The fact that the ISB has running for nearly 20 years, consistently keeping pace with the changing Higher Education landscape, means universities like CSU are able to benefit from valuable longitudinal data analysis, enabling institutions to compare to prior versions of themselves.  

Using benchmarking to inform improvement initiatives 

Chad’s team also uses the data to make comparisons within the university – how does the experience differ across operations, across different nationalities, and different levels of study, and where is there strong evidence for best practice that can be shared across the university?

“It has been very effective for us to understand how the student experience differs in different contexts.”  

CSU’s particular focus, however, is the benchmarking capabilities of the ISB. Comparing globally is naturally of interest, but the benchmarks they are most focused on are those for the US comparator group – how does CSU fair compared to its national competitors? 

“The ISB allows for all of that in ways that an internal survey wouldn't necessarily do as thoroughly.” 

Supporting mental health, wellbeing and student engagement initiatives 

Student well-being and mental health is such an important area for all universities, and it’s interesting to note that US institutions perform better in this area than their global counterparts. 

CSU itself performs in-line with those US benchmarks, which for Chad is not particularly surprising. The university’s commitment to supporting mental health stretches right across all of its operations – multiple outreach and engagement activities throughout the year support the efforts of the International Student and Scholar Service, the Student Affairs teams, mental health support services, Housing functions, and faculties. Monitoring and supporting students’ wellbeing and mental health needs is absolutely front of mind for CSU. This is reflected in student happiness exceeding both the US and global benchmarks. 

93% of students are happy with their life at CSU, compared to 92% in the US benchmark (89% in the Global ISB)

[Colorado State University ISB report, 2023]

As a direct result of the feedback from the ISB, one area of focus has been the levels of engagement between students. The data affirmed the university’s belief that, post-pandemic, students feel either isolated or struggle to make connections with other students, both from their country, but also with US students in general.

“It’s something we take very seriously - we have taken some very concrete, specific steps to develop new forms of connection among students and specifically innovative forms of connection through social media. So, rather than trying to get people to sit in rooms and eat pizza together, we are successfully implementing new ways of using social media and communication tools to facilitate students connecting with each other, and to reduce feelings of isolation. We hope to see student feedback in the next survey reflect our efforts in this area.” 

Optimising for careers and employability 

When we consider the theme of careers and employability, the most important consideration in students’ decision-making when it comes to their choice of destination, the ISB reveals some interesting results for CSU. Whilst many of the categories relating to careers and employability lag just behind the US benchmarks; students at CSU feel way more prepared for their future careers than their counterparts in other US universities. 

Feeling prepared for career goals (final year students only): 89% vs 80% global benchmark, placing CSU #1 in US, and #5 globally.

[Colorado State University ISB report, 2023]

As a land-grant university, the academic experience at CSU is designed for success in in the real world, and in a career market. Chad illustrates how they have learned something quite critical from their ISB results.

“Our career centre services are primarily designed for the domestic audience. Our office supports OPT and STEM OPT in very comprehensive ways, but the overall work of our career centres and the staff charged with helping alumni find jobs is more focused on the US opportunity, less focused on international. We saw that feedback from the ISB survey and it has given us some things to think about, within the parameters of US visa policy, but also how do we help our international students find jobs when they return home, for example. So, it's a challenging puzzle, but there's always something to work on and the ISB has put that on our list.” 

Responding to changing student demographics 

Changes in student demographics are felt by universities the world over. For CSU that shift is driven by increasing enrollments from South Asia, India and China, so the needs and perceptions of their international student population are changing, something that Chad is ever keen to understand so services, support and initiatives can be developed in the most appropriate of ways. By mining the data in the ISB, Chad segments the student population in myriad of ways, bringing clarity and context to the nuances of the student experience received across all nationalities, study levels and programs.  

“Sometimes universities can make the mistake of painting international students with that big broad brush and neatly fitting all international students into a particular bucket. In comparison, achieving such a segmented view and context through the ISB is super helpful for CSU.” 

The university in the past has also used the ISB results to incorporate their student experience successes into marketing and recruitment messages. In this way, participating universities are able to target priority regions knowing that they are doing so with an authentic voice. Knowing what drives potential students’ decision making in any given region, and what their expectations are of the student experience, gives recruitment campaigns enhanced credibility, and provides support functions with the right focus in order to deliver to those messages.

“Using the ISB to focus on student satisfaction, student success and the student experience can have both near-term and long-term positive impacts on international student enrollment and retention. And I think that's especially vital in the United States. So, I would encourage all universities to be engaging in this type of reflection, and ideally through the ISB, because I think only by really understanding where your students, are in terms of their relationship with your university, and compared with other universities, can you really get an authentic and honest answer of how satisfied your students are. It moves us away from the anecdotal to having a clear, accurate understanding, so we can make better strategic decisions.” 

CSU’s commitment to the student experience certainly comes through in their ISB results, scoring above the global benchmark for all ‘overall’ questions demonstrating a higher overall satisfaction for arrival, learning, living, support and happiness.  Also of note is the ‘Value for money’ scores which is 2% higher than the US benchmark and 11% higher than the global benchmark. 

To further build on these successes, and to continually address areas of improvement across the entire international student population, Chad now hopes to resume the pattern of regularly running the survey. It will be fascinating to see how the latest initiatives implemented by the university during the last survey cycle have impacted the student experience, and how their deep understanding of the student population can further cement CSU’s reputation as a leading force in US Higher Education.