Education and Student Surveys
Thousands of students graduate from British Columbia's public post-secondary institutions each year. Along with the Ministry of Advanced Education, these institutions understand that student feedback is important to maintaining a high-quality education system that meets the needs of today's students.
A number of annual surveys from B.C.'s post-secondary institutions are used to collect information from former students about their overall experience and level of satisfaction with their education. Student feedback is a helpful labour market information source for job seekers, employers and planners. Students are asked questions about:
- whether or not graduates are currently in jobs related to their education
- what wages they receive
- if they’ve taken further education since leaving a program
- if they were satisfied with the education they received
Student Outcomes Surveys
Each year, the BC Student Outcomes report delivers the following surveys from students enrolled in each category.
B.C. Students Outcome Highlights provides a brief overview of students’ labour market outcomes, which is useful if you don’t have time to review detailed data. For example, the former post-secondary students who were surveyed in 2010 were satisfied with the education they received—in spite of labour market conditions that made finding employment more difficult than it has been for many years. Most of the respondents from all four surveys said they were very satisfied or satisfied.
Student Mobility and Relocation Surveys
The Student Transitions Project links data about students in the B.C. public post-secondary education system with information from their years in kindergarten to Grade 12. The strictly confidential information helps the Ministry of Advanced Education, the Ministry of Education, school districts and post-secondary institutions plan and manage programs effectively to ensure student success in higher education.
The Relocating to Study Fact Sheet is useful for students who move from their home community to take post-secondary education. It covers reasons why students relocated, where they relocated to and what type of programs they relocated for.
Other Student Data Sets
The Research Universities’ Council of British Columbia (RUCBC) represents the interests of the province's six major universities, which are the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria University of Northern B.C., Royal Roads University and Thompson Rivers University. RUCBC's purpose is to identify issues facing the universities, provide leadership in policy development and communicate on behalf of the university system.
The Post-secondary Central Data Warehouse reports on 20 public post-secondary institutions in B.C. with student demographics, programs, credentials, courses and session registration and campuses for 21 public post-secondary institutions in B.C., including colleges, institutes and teaching-intensive universities. Through an agreement with Statistics Canada, the Ministry of Advanced Education provides data on behalf of contributing institutions to the Post-Secondary Student Information System, and centralizes the submission process, saving the system time and money.
Job Destinations reports describe in detail the kinds of jobs former B.C. college and institute students had at the time they were surveyed. The data shows former student employment outcomes by field of study and fields of study exited by former students' careers.