Doing more harm than good?
So, you find yourself in your final year with this terrible feeling in your chest. Could it be that when the time comes to leave that you could miss the place?
You might well miss it but, as the National Student Survey aims to find out, why?
At the end of their final year, students are given the opportunity to participate in the National Student Survey (NSS) run by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
Students’ opinions on the quality of their degree programmes are collated online, in order to assess how the institutions could improve the quality of education served to their students.
Data collected by the survey is shared with the University, allowing it to identify areas where improvements are needed.
Simple as it may seem, controversy has arisen from the students’ unions of several educational institutions, including Cambridge and the University of Warwick, who have gone so far as to encourage their students to boycott the survey.
In an article on their website, Cambridge University’s Student Union suggest that the questions asked are ‘too simple and too broad to be useful for evaluating student experiences’.
It is argued that the points raised in the questions do not account for individual experiences, and accused those conducting the survey of harassing their students unnecessarily: it has been reported that IPSOS-MORI, the company paid by the HEFCE to conduct the survey, have repeatedly called, emailed and contacted students that chose to participate.
The survey has the potential to be incredibly useful in improving the ways that Universities and other educational institutions academically manage the student experience, but can also be argued to be an invasion of privacy, and an impersonal approach to ironing out problems which could perhaps be better resolved on an individual basis.
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From my attendance at University meetings, I know the data is not looked at on its own, and I have seen how at Portsmouth, the NSS data is combined with Unit assessment feedback and other surveys to improve courses and departments.
The data is taken seriously, which was a major factor in our jump up the student satisfaction ratings last year!
The data is also of huge importance to your Students’ Union as it highlights to us any issues that might need attention - Like the enforcement of minimum contact hours, access to personal tutors and feedback mechanisms, the need for anonymous marking across all departments and the creation of a Charter of Student Rights.
The information from the NSS not only helps the individual institution to see where it can improve, but it also helps potential students make informed decisions about which University to go to.
Warwick now supports the NSS and NUS President Gemma Tumelty criticised the unwillingness of Cambridge students to participate in the survey. “It only exacerbates the reputation Cambridge has of being an elitist institution, somehow separate from others. It is valuable for students who enjoy such a reputation as that of Cambridge to be able to feed into a number of organisations that make decisions on future students’ experience."
That said, I do empathise with people who feel harassed by the survey method. I missed the survey in my final year as I didn't use my Uni e-mail account, and did get a couple of phone calls during exams which is the last thing anyone needs.
[This comment has also been reproduced in issue 8 of Pugwash News, out on January 23rd 2008 - Alex Harries]
This comment was edited by AlexH on 2008-01-21