In the hopes of obtaining honest information from undergraduates about their levels of overall happiness, their academic stresses and their social stresses, the Student Government Association (SGA) issued a survey to the entire study body last month and is currently in the process of analyzing the results.
Over a fourth of the student body - 1,219 students - have completed the survey so far. The SGA Student Rights and Interest Committee, led by junior Marc Perkins, have hired a statistician, junior Charlie Ouyang, to analyze the results.
Though they are still in the initial stages of analysis, Ouyang and Perkins say that one trend is particularly evident: Of those who admitted to being unhappy at Hopkins, the vast majority attribute their unhappiness to academic, rather than social, factors.
According to Perkins, this could be because the majority of Hopkins students prioritize academics over social life. No specific question was aimed at determining this, but dozens of students wrote in to the question "If you could go back in time to your senior year of high school and reapply to universities, would you attend Johns Hopkins?" with answers that they had come to Hopkins primarily for the academics, and that they are often too stressed out by their schoolwork to socialize.
In light of these results, Perkins and his team want to focus on developing convenient social support systems, such as the possibility of a Student Union.
According to Perkins, the SRIC decided to administer this survey as one of their first projects in becoming the liaison between the administration and the student body. Over 60 percent of students surveyed said they feel that the administration "rarely" or "never" shows that they care about its undergraduates, an answer that the SRIC hopes to change over the next few years.
"I want [the results of this survey] to be on Ron Daniel's desk in the first month of him becoming President, because he seems to really care about the undergraduate experience. Hopkins is one of the best schools in the world, and it has the resources to be a school where undergraduates really grow and develop, not just in their academics, but in their social networks as well," Perkins said.
Though this survey is aimed at calibrating students' satisfaction in their academic and personal lives, both Paula Burger, dean of Undergraduate Education, and Susan Boswell, dean of Student Life, said they were not involved in its administration, nor were they specifically aware that the survey was being issued.
"I do know that SGA told me some time ago that they were thinking about periodically gathering student opinion more systematically, but I did not know they went ahead with it ... Administratively, we do periodic surveys of student satisfaction on a wide variety of issues, including an annual senior survey and periodic enrolled student survey, sometimes in conjunction with peer universities, but these are done with the support of institutional researchers so that we are confident that the questions are carefully worded, etc. and that we are careful to avoid response bias, etc. and all the other traps of survey research," Burger wrote in an e-mail.
Perkins said he is confident that Ouyang has the expertise to draw accurate conclusions from the survey results.
"I'm using data techniques to find out the relationship between what students wrote in [as supplements to their answers] and what they specifically answered - a lot of these results aren't obvious. We have to look at variables such as demographic, gender, class, major, etc, to see how much these things affect students' answers," Ouyang said.
According to Ouyang, if the SRIC can determine which factors most strongly influence student happiness, it can lobby the administration for changes that may actually ease stress levels, such as a Student Union.
Eighty-seven percent of students surveyed answered that they would use a Student Union if the University were to establish one, and many students wrote in that they were incredulous as to why Hopkins does not already have one.
"Seriously, I work in [the Admissions office] and we always get asked where the Student Union is and I have no idea what to say. Hopkins needs a student union. I understand the university does not have a bottomless wallet, but a Student Union should be high on its list of new projects!" one student wrote.
Respondents seemed to rate the general social scene at Hopkins as average on most accounts. On a scale from one to five, one being low and five being high, the majority of students gave Hopkins a score of three for the sociability of students on campus, the attractiveness of the study body, the amount of social involvement/interaction opportunities, and the quality of on-campus programming events.
Perkins said that although the SRIC does not yet know what this implies for the administration, he hopes to expand social programming.
Perkins also noted that the SRIC plans to share information like this with the Office of Alumni Giving, as "there is currently a problem with alumni who don't remember what they liked about Hopkins."
As for the feedback related to academia, Perkins said it might be more of a challenge to find ways to respond to reported student stresses.
While nearly 67 percent of students surveyed said that their classes satisfy their intellectual academic needs, 56 percent of students said that they receive a "low to average" amount of academic support.
However, as Perkins pointed out, 69 percent of students admitted that they had never used the University's tutoring resources. This juxtaposition indicated to the SRIC that they need to develop and promote tutoring services in order to bolster academic support.
"If we can find ways to alleviate some of the most common academic stresses, then we might be able to find ways to bolster student happiness in general," Perkins said.
The SRIC hopes to complete analysis of the data by the end of the semester, and they plan to publish their findings at the beginning of the spring semester.
