About the 2023 Student Experience Survey

Goal

The Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) implements the annual Student Experience Survey (previously called the Student Exit Survey). This survey collects information from students about their employment experiences in the federal public service.

The survey provides a snapshot of students’ work experiences in their current organization to help improve the student orientation process and ensure they have meaningful learning opportunities.

The Student Experience Survey (SES) asks questions about:

• recruitment
• onboarding and orientation
• employment in the federal public service
• general information (self-identification)
• pay
• work experience
• accommodations
• work environment
• workplace well-being

Timing

The SES took place from July 31 to September 15, 2023, at the end of the summer work term.

Survey administrator

TBS administered the SES using the survey software SimpleSurvey.

Eligibility

Students were eligible to take part in the SES if they were hired for a summer work term through:

• a student employee program (Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP)
• Post-secondary Co-operative Education and Internship Program (CO-OP/Internship)
• Research Affiliate Program (RAP)
• any other student program

Student employees whose work terms were extended or were rehired for a following work term were also eligible to take part.

Confidentiality

The Privacy Act protects survey responses. No data gets released that can be traced back to respondents.

To protect peoples’ identities and keep their answers confidential:

• responses are grouped together so they can’t be attributed to an individual
• if there are fewer than 10 respondents for a question, the data isn’t published
• individual responses are never published or shared with government departments or agencies

Survey results

Participating organizations received survey results in the fall of 2023. Departments and agencies received a combined dataset of their results, with proper suppression rules applied for small respondent counts.