Measuring Student Success: A Value-Added Approach

The notion of what constitutes a ‘quality’ university has been challenged by the 2014 Gallup-Purdue Survey (Great Jobs, Great Lives: The 2014 Gallup-Purdue Index Report, Gallup, Inc., 2014). This survey of 30,000 US university alumni revealed that engagement and feelings of well-being beyond the university and into the workplace have little to do with the prestige of the university and much to do with having caring professors and being afforded opportunities for experiential learning. The Survey has shifted the focus from what university professors value to what students value. Assuming universities are interested in what students think, the issue then becomes one of assessing ‘value added’, and this paper examines one university’s approach to addressing this issue.