by Daniel Covington, edited by Jenna Nicodemus
In early spring, Centre had several surveys floating around, mainly the college’s Student Experience survey as well as some others targeting specific offices. On April 16 2025, Barbara LoMonaco presented the results of the college student experience survey in an SGA meeting.
However, on May 6th, Cento staff released the results of our own survey. The difference in the data is staggering.
Regarding how the questions were formatted, Centre asked students to do variations of agree or disagree with certain statements. The Cento mainly used a 5-point Likert scale for students to rate satisfaction with aspects of campus. Centre asked questions in a way that assumed students had a positive experience, whereas the Cento asked questions without this assumption in the format.
I have compiled a comparison chart but it should be noted that these surveys show very different priorities, so only a few questions are really comparable.
Centre College The Cento
| 25% student response rate | 5.5% student response rate |
| Regarding campus safety, students said they felt safe most or all the time regardless of gender. Only a small percentage said they felt unsafe. | Campus safety – 79% of respondents rated this a 4 or higher. |
| Over 83% of students said they agreed or were in the middle regarding positive interactions with RLO staff. | Residence Life Office – 74% of respondents rated this a 2 or below. |
| Over 80% of students said they agreed or were in the middle regarding positive interactions with DPS. | Department of Public Safety – responses were generally split across the board, as 29% gave this a 4, 31% gave this a 3, 23% gave this a 2. |
| 86% of students said they were happy with their current living space. It is notable that just about all students in a single room were happy but students in a double were overwhelmingly unhappy. | Over 60% of students rated student housing a 1 or 2. |
| Over 70% of students said they understood the process for reporting broken items. | Campus accessibility was split across the board albeit slanted negatively, 18% gave this a 1, 33% gave this a 2, and 26% gave a 3. 90% of disabled students rated this a 2 or below. |
| Over 90% of students said they agreed or strongly agreed that their interactions with health promotion staff were positive. | Center for Career and Professional Development – leaning on the positive side, 46% gave this a 3, and 42% gave this a 4 or higher. |
| Over 90% of students said they had positive interactions or were in the middle with student health staff. | Centre Global – leaning on the positive side, 48.1% gave this a 3, and 39% gave this a 4 or higher. |
| Campus safety – 79% of respondents rated this a 4 or higher. | |
| The quality of administration at Centre – responses were slanted negatively, with 82% of respondents rating this a 3 or lower | |
| Student worker wages – by far the most decisively negatively rated aspect on the survey, a whopping 68% of respondents gave this exactly a 1. |
Between these two surveys there were also quite a few comments:
- Both surveys had comments about food quality and consistency.
- Both surveys had students complain about disability support.
- Several people between both surveys had concerns about Centre Global and communication in general.
- Education and experience with professors were generally rated positive, though some talked about the workload being oppressive.
- Students indicated a need for more transparency from administration as well as transparency on how tuition dollars are used.
- It was reported that DPS has some officers who go out of their way, and some that are not nice.
So knowing this information, what is really going on here? Is one survey more accurate than the other?
Firstly, we can see the number of respondents for each survey differs over 19 percent – so sample size certainly plays a part. However, as noted before, the way questions were asked seems to have played a big role. Not that Centre is actively trying to skew results, but framing things positively in the very questions being posed to students may introduce bias with the suggestion that students ought to feel positive about things. For example, a known contentious issue at Centre – housing – was shown to be rated positively by students on Centre’s survey, which puzzled administration and SGA members during the SGA meeting reviewing the survey results.
It is also possible that students are just more willing to be honest when they know students are involved (i.e., the student newspaper) instead of admin. Being blunt and upfront with the people in power at institutions is a hard thing to do.
In the future, I would like to see both surveys ask questions that relate to the free-response comments that students brought up, since they weren’t covered in the questions themselves. Also, both the Cento and Centre should expand their sample size for survey results, to ensure accuracy.