Austin Community College (ACC) continues to meet or exceed student expectations, according to the 2020 Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) results.

Overall, 91 percent of students who participated said ACC has met or exceeded their expectations, 85 percent were satisfied with their experience, and 90 percent said they would re-enroll. 

The Noel-Levitz SSI is conducted every three years to assess student satisfaction at ACC in eight categories. Since it was initially used in 2008, ACC has improved in mean satisfaction ratings in all eight areas. 

Additionally, the college’s mean rating in 2020 exceeded the mean ratings for community colleges nationally on all satisfaction scales. The most significant improvements were in the categories of Safety and Security, Admissions and Financial Aid Effectiveness, and Academic Advising Effectiveness. 

“We are seeing higher ratings for Academic Advising Effectiveness in 2020 as a result of many factors, such as implementation of the new advising model, the institution-wide Guided Pathways initiative, and focused advising attention on first-time students,” says Dr. Jenna Cullinane Hege, vice president of Institutional Research & Analytics. 

Some of the specific items that drove increases in this category include student perceptions of advisor knowledge, advisor ability to apply a student's program to his/her career goals, and receiving feedback about progress toward academic goals. 

Instructional effectiveness is also on the rise. In this category, students indicated increased levels of satisfaction with faculty being fair and unbiased, faculty availability to students outside of class, and faculty providing timely feedback about academic progress. In addition to the Guided Pathways initiative, some factors that may be related to these increases include ACC’s efforts to implement an equity framework in the faculty hiring process, to scale student success courses, and to support faculty adoption of high impact practices.

View the full results on the OIRA website: https://www.austincc.edu/oira/ext_rpts/noel-levitz.html.