TRU below average?

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The results of a survey released this week by Maclean’s magazine show Thompson Rivers University is below the national average when it comes to student satisfaction.

The survey, called the National Survey of Student Engagement, asked two questions:

• How would you evaluate your educational experience at TRU?

• Would you attend TRU again if you could start over?

The questions were posed to first-year and senior students.

Among TRU freshmen, 28 per cent responded “excellent” when asked to evaluate their entire educational experience at their institution, while 52 per cent responded “good.”

In TRU’s senior class, 35 per cent responded “excellent”, while 49 per cent responded “good.”

Langley’s Trinity Western University had the highest grade, with 76 per cent of its senior class responding “excellent” and 20 per cent responding “good.”

When asked if they would return to TRU if they could start over, 31 per cent of freshmen responded “definitely yes”, while 52 per cent responded “probably yes.”

Those results were the second-lowest among all first-year classes responding, ahead of only Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University.

When seniors were asked the same question, 37 per cent said they would definitely attend TRU again, while 37 per cent said they probably would.

TRU’s vice-president of advancement, Christopher Seguin, said school officials will use the survey results moving forward.

“In any survey like this, it reflects the perception of the students,” he said.

“We listen to these surveys. We listened to them two years ago.”

Seguin said the results two years ago resulted in sweeping changes to TRU’s student-services department, including recruiting, orientation and student life.

The university also hired a dean of students — Christine Adams.

“We’ve done a lot over the last few years,” Seguin said.

In comparison to other B.C. schools included in the survey, TRU finished below Abbotsford’s University of the Fraser Valley in each category, but had results similar to those of the University of Victoria and Surrey’s Kwantlen Polytechnic.

SFU finished near the bottom in each category, while TWU, a private institution, was routinely near the top.

TRU’s results were below the national average in each category.