A 10-year case study on the changing determinants of university student satisfaction in the UK

Abstract

Higher Education (HE), once the prerogative of a tiny elite, is now accessible to larger numbers of people around the world than ever before yet despite the fact that an understanding of student satisfaction has never been more important for today’s universities, the concept remains poorly understood. Here we use published data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS), representing data from 2.3 million full-time students collected from 2007 to 2016, as a case study of the benefits and limitations of measuring student satisfaction that might have applicability for other countries, particularly those that, like the UK, have experienced significant growth in student numbers. The analyses showed that the factor structure of the NSS remained generally stable and that the ability of the NSS to discriminate between different subjects at different universities actually improved over the ten-year sample period. The best predictors of overall satisfaction were ‘Teaching Quality’ and ‘Organisation & Management’, with ‘Assessment & Feedback’ having relatively weak predictive ability, despite the sector’s tangible efforts to improve on this metric. The tripling of student fees in 2012 for English students (but not the rest of the UK) was used as a ‘natural experiment’ to investigate the sensitivity of student satisfaction ratings to the real economic costs of HE. The tuition fee increase had no identifiable negative effect, with student satisfaction steadily improving throughout the decade. Although the NSS was never designed to measure perceived value-for-money, its insensitivity to major changes in the economic costs of HE to the individual suggest that the conventional concept of student satisfaction is incomplete. As such we propose that the concept of student satisfaction: (i) needs to be widened to take into account the broader economic benefits to the individual student by including measures of perceived value-for-money and (ii) should measure students’ level of satisfaction in the years post-graduation, by which time they may have a greater appreciation of the value of their degree in the workplace.

National Student Survey: Reliability and prediction of overall satisfaction scores with special reference to UK Dental Schools

“…Factor analysis has been undertaken by Burgess et al in their analysis of NSS data over a 10‐year period from 2007 to 2016. Again, the trend for increasing scores generally and relatively low scores for feedback was noted.…”

“…Given the acknowledged impact of the NSS, there are surprisingly few studies conducting analysis of data obtained, with most providing a relatively “high level” analysis of utility or differences between subject areas with studies also assessing economic value . Studies aiming to correlate various factors of educational provision with favourable NSS outcome have been published, and there is limited work assessing the determinants of overall satisfaction: Burgess et al have undertaken a 10‐year study which has shown a pattern of increase in satisfaction each year, the reasons for which remain unclear and largely subjective and although may reflect “gaming” by higher education institutes are more likely a true reflection of real change in quality, with universities responding to ratings from the NSS. Langan et al have looked at relationships between individual question responses and overall satisfaction, but to date such data do not exist for dentistry.…”

The Relation between Gender, Reasons to Participate in STEM-Related Subjects, Programs and The University Supports On First-Year University Student’s Satisfaction: A Structural Equation Model

“…Moreover, students in a university STEM classroom probably have different learning needs compared to students in different subject areas, such as laboratory activities or site visits (Chang & Park, 2014). This finding has encouraged STEM teaching to satisfy the students expectation because teaching quality and expertise showed the most reliable relationship with student's satisfaction and their learning outcomes (Green, Hood, & Neumann, 2015;Hakim, 2014;Lo, 2010;Suarman, Aziz, & Yasin, 2013;Burgess, Senior, Moores, 2018;Khalil-Ur-Rehman, Farooq, & Younas, 2018;Son, Ha, Thi, & Khuyen, 2018).…”

“The Rules of Engagement”: Student Engagement and Motivation to Improve the Quality of Undergraduate Learning

“…Graduates are also less likely to engage in criminal activity (Sabates, 2008). In light of these clear benefits it is perhaps unsurprising that the global HE sector remains vibrant with more and more people applying to study at HE than ever before (Altbach et al, 2009 see also Burgess et al, 2018).…”