About the Study
Methods

Student Watch™ is conducted online twice a year, in the fall and spring terms. It is designed to proportionately match the most recent figures of U.S. higher education published in The Chronicle of Higher Education: 2015/2016 Almanac. Ninety institutions were selected to participate based on the following factors: public vs. private schools, two-year vs. four-year degree programs, enrollment size, and geographic location. Participating campuses included:

90 institutions
33 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces
71 four-year institutions and 19 two-year institutions
61 public institutions and 29 private institutions
33 institutions with fewer than 5,000 students enrolled, 15 institutions with 5,000 to 9,999 students enrolled, 15 institutions with 10,000 to 20,000 students enrolled, 27 institutions with more than 20,000 students enrolled.

Campus stores distributed the survey to their students by email. The first survey fielded in October/November 2016. A total of 24,641 valid responses were collected. The second survey wave fielded in February/March 2017 and yielded a total of 19,915 responses. The data from each survey were weighted by campus type to more accurately reflect the proportion of students enrolled at two- and four-year U.S. institutions. The margin of error for this study is <1.0 at the 95% confidence level.

Keywords

digital materials · free materials · renting course materials