Students and Alumni Comments on Teaching
Alumni were also queried regarding how well the curriculum covered the breadth of anthropological Method/Theory. In responding to this question, 67% believed they were exceptionally well or more than adequately prepared, another 29% felt adequately prepared, and just 4% thought themselves less than adequately prepared in this area. Related to this issue was a question pertaining to perceptions of how broad or restrictive the major requirements were. In this case, 46% of alumni respondents characterized the requirements as being sufficiently broad to acquaint them with the four sub-disciplines of anthropology and another 38% thought them flexible enough to learn about all areas and still meet unit needs. Just 17% overall believed the current structure to be too restrictive (13%) or somewhat too restrictive (4%) to permit pursuit of an interest in their favorite sub-field of anthropology. We take these results as indicating that students in the survey appreciated the notion of academic breadth at the undergraduate level, with the opportunity of greater focus during graduate study.
Two questions in the alumni survey pertain to life after graduation. The first asks how students assessed the importance of their degree in anthropology to their current employer or job. Some 46% reported the degree as somewhat or very (41%) important, 18% as slightly important, and 36% as not important. These responses suggest that perhaps half of the alumni are currently engaged in jobs or careers with some ties to the social sciences, though without further information the particulars of these relationships are uncertain. A second question has to do with how well the major prepared them for graduate school. Thirty percent of the respondents scored this as not applicable, presumably because they have no aspirations in that direction. When those responses are excluded from the total, results show that 62% agree or strongly agree that they were well prepared, 19% are neutral in the matter, and another 19% feel they were ill-prepared for graduate study.
While generally encouraged by these numbers, the fact that nearly a fifth of respondents felt unprepared for graduate study suggests a need to reconsider this facet of the program. If such preparation is taken as a fundamental goal of the major, then it is clearly necessary to determine particular areas alumni took to be deficient in this regard; alternatively, one might conclude that since only a fraction of our majors have further academic goals the distribution of responses is acceptable.
Nine additional questions on the survey required qualitative, written comments (see Appendix 4). Responses to these queries were generally favorable but highly varied, identifying particularly valuable courses, interesting topical areas, keystone instructors, and the like. Perhaps the most encouraging trend in these comments relates to how many students felt the Anthropology major broadened their perspectives and appreciation for cultural diversity. It seems evident that the sample, though small, includes alumni with a wide range of anthropological interests and goals.
