Williams College
Self-Study for Accreditation
Public Disclosure
We have long worked to make relevant information about College policies and practices readily available to current and prospective students as well as to faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and the general public, and have been alert to changing opportunities created by the widespread use by target audiences of the Internet.
Almost all of that information is in this Self Study, on the Web, and/or in the Team Room.
We analyze in several ways and on an ongoing basis how available and effective that information is, and benefit from external perspectives and evaluations in that respect.
For at least two decades we have used the College Board’s annual Admitted Student Questionnaire (ASQ) to capture feedback from prospective students on many aspects of the College’s admission process, including “the quality of information provided” by College sources, and to compare them with communication sources at peer institutions.
Ratings from applicants admitted to the Class of 2010 are typical. ASQ data for that year (in Team Room) show that applicants, whether or not they enrolled at Williams, rated as predominantly excellent or very good virtually every existing source of College information. The only exceptions were ratings for “College videos,” which we do not have, and “College-sponsored meetings,” the meaning of which is unclear (ratings in those two categories came from fewer than 25 per cent of respondents).
The College Board provides comparative ratings from applicants admitted to more than one college or university. We receive these comparative data on Williams and five other well endowed, highly selective colleges and universities, which, by agreement with the College Board, we cannot name publicly. Full data on these comparisons, however, are in the Team Room. In general, the ratings that applicants gave to our published sources of information equal or exceed those of the five peers. The few exceptions include “publications” in comparison with one college, “Website” in comparison with two universities, and “financial-aid communications” with one university.
The College shares these results each year with those on campus responsible for these communications.
Every four years we participate in a survey of current parents administered by the Consortium on the Financing of Higher Education (COFHE). The most recent survey for which results are fully available was given in Spring 2003. We shall also benefit soon from the survey given in the Spring of 2007. On the 2003 survey Williams parents rated College communications very high. Among 15 subject areas (e.g. “academic life and policies,” “financing”) a majority of parents rated “the information I have received” in the top two categories of “good” or “very good.” In 12 of the areas, more than two-thirds of parents rated the College’s information as good or very good. The exceptions were information on “religious life,” “careers,” and “off-campus programs.” The per cent of respondents rating them in the top two categories were 56, 60, and 55. COFHE provides comparative data for all of its 31 member institutions that choose to take part. By agreement, we cannot publish those data but they are in the Team Room.
In the 2003 COFHE Parent Questionnaire we added College-specific questions about communication vehicles. Among the Williams parents who felt they had enough experience of each vehicle to rate it, almost 80 per cent or more rated as good or very good the “Parents Handbook,” “Parents Newsletter,” parents section of the College Website, and the overall College Website.
We routinely share these data with those responsible for parent communications. As a result of the data from the 2003 Parents Survey, we have put more, and more frequent, information regarding religious life, careers, and off-campus programs in the Parents Handbook and Parents Newsletter and on the Parents Web pages.
As part of the self study, and to supplement the data just described, we devised a simple test of how available the information stipulated in Standard 10 is in our main publications. We produced a questionnaire that asked respondents to review the view book, catalog, student handbook, and Website and then to rate information stipulated in Standard 10 as being either not available, somewhat available, or suitably available in those College media. The questionnaire and results are in the Team Room. We administered it to the 11 Williams administrators who make up the College’s Communications Advisory Group and to the ten student workers of the Office of Public Affairs, who represent the diversity of the student body.
Almost all pieces of information were rated suitably available. One exception was “how to obtain a copy of Williams’ most recent audited statement or summary thereof.” We have since tagged the Web page showing the audited statement so it will show up in a simple search. Another exception was “expected levels of debt incurred by financial-aid students.” Though perhaps not prominent in the publications surveyed, this information is in the financial-aid material sent to all prospective students the Admission Office believes might be interested in it and to all who ask for information on financial aid. It also appears in the Common Data Set posted annually on the Website of the Institutional Research Office.
To inform the management of College communications, we plan to administer this new questionnaire with some frequency to a wider circle of students.
Since the last self study, we undertook a large study of diversity issues at the College and used our Website to make the results available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni. These included data on experiences of the College as they differed on average among students from racial and other groups. We also made available by Web to students, faculty, and staff an outside consultant’s report on how the College is experienced by faculty of racial and other groups. A change in Web technology that occurred between a previous diversity consultants’ report and this would have made sharing the latter with alumni cumbersome. Consultants and others outside the College, including colleagues at peer institutions, confirmed our sense that in general we had made this information more readily available than do other colleges and universities.
Deciding which data from our extensive diversity study to make available took considerable thought, given the sensitive nature of some of it. This matter was discussed by the Diversity Initiatives Coordinating Committee, composed of faculty, staff, and students. The group’s decision was to make available to members of the College community, including alumni, all the information gathered on student experiences, analyzed by group, but not information on student performance by group. The decision not to include the latter was in recognition of the inappropriateness in a small community of drawing attention to the performance of relatively small groups and of the effects such reporting could have on the well documented phenomenon of “stereotype threat.” We included all the data, including that on student performance, in the version of the initiatives Self Study made available to the Diversity Initiatives Coordinating Committee and other College policy makers, including trustees. The full report and the consultant’s report on faculty experiences are in the Team Room.
Third party observers also report that the College has advanced more than its peers in public disclosure regarding the endowment. For instance the Website for our Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (acsr.williams.edu) lists each year the social issue proxy votes that the committee has recommended and the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees has approved. We also make available each year in the College Archives a list of holdings in the endowment as of the end of the previous fiscal year.
Virtually all the forms of disclosure discussed here are available to the public, with the exception, because of cost, of the admission viewbook.
Projections: In the future, we will continue to monitor the usefulness of our public disclosure through surveys and through the new public disclosure questionnaire described above. We will also remain alert to ways to adapt emerging technologies to this purpose. We have committed to share biennially the newest data on student experiences of Williams as they differ on average by racial and other groups. We also project the development of creative ways to disclose useful data on the sustainability of our operations. The sustainability Website (www.williams.edu/resources/sustainability) is an early step, and we project various initiatives in disclosure in the years ahead. To make our operations sustainable, and in particular to reach our goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we will need to develop imaginative ways to keep the College community informed about how the decisions that the College and individuals make either advance or hurt these efforts. Evidence from elsewhere suggests that people are more likely to reduce their consumption of energy the more they can see an immediate, measured result. We need to weigh the costs of such systems against their benefits. In general, however, the next ten years are likely to bring considerably more public disclosure about the sustainability of our operations.
Finally regarding Standard 10, the College has posted public announcements of how third party comments about Williams can be given to the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education as part of this accreditation review. We published announcements in the June edition of the Alumni Review and in local newspapers in the same month.
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