Dartmouth's first comprehensive scientific alumni survey was released last week, reporting an overall satisfaction with the College by alumni.
Twelve-hundred of the College's 47,000 alumni were interviewed by the PSC International researching firm in December and January of this year. The researchers' objectives were to assess the general attitude and perception of alumni.
The 85-question survey involved a 15 to 20 minute telephone interview with alumni from representative age and gender brackets. The alumni interviewed were divided up into three groups: older alumni who graduated between 1919 and 1975; younger male alumni who graduated between 1976 and 1993; and younger female alumni who graduated between 1976 and 1993. The College first admitted women in 1972.
The majority of alumni interviewed appeared pleased with the state of the College.
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Ninety-six percent of alumni reported that their years at Dartmouth were intellectually challenging and 87 percent said they would choose Dartmouth again.
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Seventy-seven percent of alumni think Dartmouth today is as good or better than when they attended while 18 percent of the older alumni feel the school is not as good as it was when they attended.
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Seventy-six percent of alumni have a positive or very positive attitude about Dartmouth with less than 10 percent reporting negative or very negative feelings.
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Eighty-nine percent of alumni said they would recommend Dartmouth to a female applicant and 94 percent would do the same for a male applicant.
"The survey indicated that the alumni are well informed and they support the direction of the College," said Karl Furstenberg, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid.
Furstenberg, who helped develop the survey, said the survey would not be of extensive use to the College now but it will serve as an established baseline to compare results of future surveys about alumni concerns.
Furstenberg also said the results of the survey would be of most use to the Alumni Affairs Office. He said the survey was not designed to help determine priorities or help make management decisions at the College.
The idea for the comprehensive survey has been discussed for more than a decade, but in the past alumni and college officials resisted implementing it because they thought the results would be potentially divisive, College Spokesman Alex Huppe said.
But in May 1993, representatives from the 104-member Alumni Council and members of the administration formed the Alumni Survey Working Group to find a research firm to conduct the survey.
"The alumni are an extremely important constituency of the College," said Cary Clark, the College's top counsel and a member of the Working Group. "One of the primary goals was to help us in improving communication with the alumni."
Chris Strenta, the director of institutional research for the College, was mainly responsible for assisting in the selection of the research firm that conducted the survey. PSC International was chosen from nine firms.
The College paid PSC International, an independent researching firm located in Arlington, Virginia, $25,000 to conduct the survey. The firm interviewed College administrators and representatives to create the survey.
"I was impressed with how smoothly the operation went and with the cooperation of the College," said Jasper Smith, vice-president of PSC International.
Kiewit assisted PSC International by giving them access to the Dartmouth Alumni database.
Strenta said the questions were asked in a fair manner.
"There's no interpretation there. It's pretty much a description of the data. We didn't want to put a slant on it one way or another," Strenta said.
"We wanted to find out where they stood and if there were communication gaps, to address those issues. We wanted to get a more scientific investigation of how the alumni feel," he said.
Echoing the same sentiment as other college officials, Alumni Council President Curt Welling said the survey will not affect college policy.
"A survey like this is not done to affect policy or governance, but it is a good means for strengthening relationships," he said. The survey "is a necessary step in improving communication between the College and its alumni."
Some survey questions also dealt with more controversial issues concerning the campus today.
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The survey showed 60 percent of surveyed alumni agree that alcohol abuse among students is a serious problem at Dartmouth. Only 4 percent strongly disagreed.
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Seventy-two percent of all alumni surveyed think Dartmouth has a reputation as a heavy-drinking party school.
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About 60 percent of all alumni surveyed feel the fraternity/sorority system contributes in a positive way to the well-being of the College today. Almost half of the female alumni surveyed feel the Greek system offers a negative experience.
Copies of this survey can be obtained from the College News Service or the Alumni Affairs Office.
