National Student Survey 2016: satisfaction scores stay high in £9K fee era

Undergraduate satisfaction levels remain high despite the advent of £9,000 tuition fees in England, according to the 2016 National Student Survey.

Eighty-six per cent of the more than 300,000 final-year UK undergraduates who responded to this year’s survey said that they were satisfied with their course, the same as the all-time high recorded in the 2014 and 2015 results.

This year’s ratings are the second to include undergraduates who paid the higher tuition fees introduced in 2012, with all respondents in England bar a handful on five-year courses now on the new fee regime.

In England, overall satisfaction scores stood at 85 per cent – down one percentage point from the previous year. 

In Wales, overall scores rose from 85 to 86 per cent, while results in Scotland and Northern Ireland are unchanged at 86 and 89 per cent, respectively.

This year’s results in England will be among those that feed into the teaching excellence framework (TEF), which will use an average of NSS scores over three years to measure teaching quality. The first full-scale TEF will use the 2016, 2015 and 2014 NSS results.

These scores, as well as data on dropout rates and graduate employment, will help to decide TEF ratings and, thus, the maximum tuition fee that individual institutions can charge.

The most highly rated universities in this year’s NSS, excluding small, specialist institutions, are Keele University and the University of St Andrews, both of which scored 94 per cent overall.

Aberystwyth University, Liverpool Hope University, Bishop Grosseteste University and Harper Adams University all scored 92 per cent.

David Llewellyn, vice-chancellor of Harper Adams, said that the roll-out of the TEF was likely to focus the minds of senior university staff even further on their NSS results.

“Universities will be looking for steady improvements given the three-year average of results that will be considered,” Professor Llewellyn said.

“It’s important to note that the NSS questions will change next year, but the key thing is to continue to engage students with high-quality teaching by enthusiastic staff,” he added.

As in previous years, London universities performed poorly on student satisfaction, with half of the 20 lowest-ranking UK higher education institutions situated in the capital.

The London School of Economics, whose overall score fell 6 percentage points this year to 75, received the lowest score of any university once small and specialist institutions are excluded.

Paul Kelly, pro-director of education at the LSE, said that the school was taking urgent steps to address its poor performance, including investing £11 million in teaching over three years, but its lowly position was not unexpected.

“As an institution, we are not used to coming bottom of any league table, and we are not happy about it, but this is not a surprise,” Professor Kelly said.

The start of large-scale building works linked to a £120 million campus revamp and a one-off system failure around timetabling and room bookings partly explained this year’s poor result, he added.

However, the LSE’s “traditional” assessment methods, which rely on end-of-year closed-book exams rather than the continuous submission of coursework, were also likely to create “high stress”  among students, particularly as they did not know which degree classification they were likely to achieve, leading to lower satisfaction scores, Professor Kelly continued.

The LSE would continue to participate in the TEF even if its lower scores meant “embarrassment in the first instance” because the institution regards rewarding good teaching as an “important agenda”, he said.

In addition to the LSE, six other Russell Group universities returned below average scores in this year’s NSS, giving more credence to the idea that a new elite might emerge from any TEF ranking.

Of the 24 universities to score 90 or above, six are from the 24-strong Russell Group and 15 are campus-based or medium-sized universities outside it. Coventry University and the University of Lincoln are the highest-placed post-92 universities, each scoring 91.

“This new hierarchy is one that people might not expect and which doesn’t match up to their preconceptions,” said Andrew Gunn, researcher in higher education based at the University of Leeds.

Adam Child, senior policy and strategy officer at Lancaster University, who has studied the NSS, said that there was a striking similarity between this year’s NSS rankings and the “mock TEF” rankings produced by Times Higher Education in June, confirming his view that a “new elite” could emerge from the framework.

“Very few universities combine both a high-quality learning experience and research excellence, but a particular type of university can demonstrate these twin tracks of excellence,” said Mr Child, who added that these high performers generally shared characteristics of universities once allied to the now-defunct 1994 Group.

jack.grove@tesglobal.com

National Student Survey 2016 results: top 20

View the full satisfaction results of the National Student Survey 2016

Biggest % point increase

Biggest % point decrease

Highest scoring

Lowest scoring

Source: National Student Survey 2016, excluding small and specialist institutions