State Board of Education released early results of student survey

BOISE, Idaho (KIFI) - The Idaho State Board of Education heard preliminary results from its Postsecondary Student Experience Survey Wednesday.

Nearly 9,000 students – 16.4% of Idaho’s total undergraduate and graduate student population attending all eight public colleges and universities, participated in the voluntary scientific survey conducted last month.

Early results indicate a large majority of students across all institutions, class levels and political leanings feel valued, respected, and have sense of belonging at their respective institutions.

Key Findings:

• 87% feel valued; 95% feel respected; 90% feel a sense of belonging
• 67% never or rarely feel pressured to affirm or accept beliefs they find offensive
• 78% never or rarely feel shamed or bullied for sharing their personal beliefs or viewpoints.
• 89% feel safe to express their personal beliefs or viewpoints with others
• 76% are familiar with safeguards and policies that protect freedom of expression
• 85% agree that it is important to participate in courses and activities that are designed specifically to enhance understanding of other’s beliefs and viewpoints

“There is a group of students, from 10% to 33% that indicated at least occasionally feeling not valued, not respected or having a sense of belonging, or at least occasionally feeling pressured to affirm or accept beliefs or shamed or bullied for their personal beliefs,” Board Chief Academic Officer Dr. TJ Bliss said. “We aren’t making any value statements about what that means, I’m just pointing out what the data says now. We are going to look at the data in ways to provide direction, guidance and actions for our institutions to take to gain value from the data.”

“We launched this survey in order to get a general sense of how our students feel they are treated on our campuses,” State Board President Kurt Liebich said. “The good news is most of our postsecondary students, regardless of political leaning, gender, race, or age feel valued, respected and welcome on our campuses. But a minority of students in our state also say there are times when they don’t feel a sense of belonging.”

“Hard discussions in class are part of the learning experience, but we don’t want these discussions to cross the line into pressuring, bullying or shaming of students,” Liebich said. “Today, we begin a new data-driven conversation about how the Board may better support all of our college students.”

Board members directed staff to dive deeper into the data and develop an interactive dashboard with the results available early next year.