College praises good numbers, questions bad ones

There are some great results and some not-so-clear results for Sault College in the 2015 Key Performance Indicators (KPI), newly released by Colleges Ontario.

The KPI results are released annually and rank Ontario colleges in  several categories.

Sault College ranked number one in overall student satisfaction among English-speaking colleges in Ontario (85.4 percent), and ranked second in that category only to Sudbury's French-language College Boreal (87.4 percent).

"Sault College has been either one or two for the past five years, so that's an outstanding record given there are 24 colleges in Ontario," said Ron Common, Sault College president, at Thursday's Sault College board of governors meeting.

Sault College also ranked third in graduate satisfaction (86.4 percent) behind Confederation and Boreal (each of them Northern Ontario colleges).

The college ranked very high (95.5 percent) in employer satisfaction.

"I think this reflects the work our advisory committees do, in which we have employers on the committees, helping us to keep our programs relevant and meeting the needs of the employers," Common told the board.

The graduate employment rate for Sault College is 82.6 percent (based on a survey of 2014-2015 graduates six months after graduation).

"That's one percent lower than the provincial average and six percent lower than the top-ranked college in this category (Boreal, at 89.4 percent)," Common said.

"I think it's significant, given the economy of Sault Ste. Marie and the Algoma region, given it's not within our total control, I think that's an outstanding result."

Not so clear is the college's graduation rate of 64.5 percent, as compared to the provincial average of 66.7 percent.

"This one is always something we need to talk about," Common said.

"We take in about 1,000 students every year and we graduate 1,000 students every year…it makes you wonder about data that shows 64.5 percent."

Common said the data does not factor in the reality some students transfer programs within the college.

Instead, a student leaving a program to transfer into another program within the college is considered to not have graduated, according to the KPI data gathering method.

"We've got to work on that data so we can get a more accurate indicator," Common told the board.

"The graduation rate is problematic because it leaves out those factors like transfers and university articulations, it lacks legitimacy," said Sherri Smith, Sault College academic development manager, speaking to reporters after Thursday's meeting.

"The universities have moved to student tracking in their graduation rate (including students transferring from one program to another) and that gives them a much more accurate picture of what's happening inside their doors," Smith said.

Data was not immediately available as to how many Sault College working graduates are actually working in their chosen field of study (as compared to another line of work), neither how many born-and-raised Sault and area grads have found work in the area (as compared to moving away to find employment).

Sault College employment services continue to be on hand to help the postsecondary school's grads find work, Smith said.