Attendee Question:
In an
11/28 article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education, a study is cited (U. of Iowa) that indicates
"first-generation students who experienced the most contact with faculty
members generally had the worst educational outcomes." This report seems to conflict with what
you've talked about, in terms of the compensatory effect, etc. What do you know about this study, and is
there an alignment that didn't come out of the Chronicle article?
Dr. George Kuh's Answer:
We’ve known this in our own research for more than a
decade. That is, the students who report
the most frequent contact with faculty also report gaining less from the
college experience.
We have tended to confuse what we mean by the
positive effects of student-faculty contact.
It’s often misunderstood: it is not that “more is better,” it is the
nature and substance of the contact that matters. It doesn’t make sense to say to faculty,
“You’ve got to sit in your office and wait for students to arrive and then chat
them up.” Also, we have parents saying,
“Please get to know a faculty member,” so that the nature of the conversation
is, “Well, my mother told me to come in here and talk with you, I want to be
sure you know my name.” These kinds of human interactions are not trivial, of
course, but what really matters with student-faculty interaction is whether
faculty members are pressing the students to think, reflect and connect what
they are doing in their class with other experiences they have outside of
class, the real world and so forth.
In terms of compensatory effects, our engagement
measures take into account a range of engagement activities, and not just
casual conversations between students and faculty.