July 2021

Student satisfaction at University College Birmingham highest in the city

By Melanie Hall

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Student satisfaction at University College Birmingham is the highest of the city’s five universities, according to this year’s National Student Survey (NSS).

With an overall score of 75.4%, the university ranked particularly highly in terms of students feeling their voices were heard, six percentage points higher than the national average.

The university also made the top 25% of UK universities when it came to staff valuing students, views and values about the course, scoring over 75%.

Alice Wilby, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Access, Participation and Student Experience, said the university had worked hard over what had been a difficult year to ensure students received a first-rate university experience to be proud of.

“Like all universities, the pandemic brought extraordinary challenges and through collaboration and involving students in decision-making, we rose to these challenges,” she said. “We found new and innovative ways to protect the quality of what we deliver, implementing new online systems and resources, and our teaching staff were exemplary in their resilience and dedication to ensuring we achieved this.

“We’ve offered an unprecedented level of support over the past year, from academic to mental health and hardship funding, and made sure we had policies in place to ensure academic fairness. And before the pandemic, we invested £130 million in our campuses and training facilities and know students are going to benefit enormously from being able to utilise these properly in the next academic year.

“Through our new partnership with the Russell Group University of Warwick, we aim to raise the bar even higher, providing students with exciting undergraduate and postgraduate study and research opportunities, access to the broad employer networks of both universities to help them achieve strong employability outcomes, and online learning and library resources that complement our own award-winning library services and hi-tech learning environments.”

"We’ve offered an unprecedented level of support over the past year, from academic to mental health and hardship funding, and made sure we had policies in place to ensure academic fairness."

Alice Wilby Pro Vice-Chancellor for Access, Participation and Student Experience

Other survey strengths included the effectiveness of the Guild of Students in representing students’ academic interests, up five per cent on the previous year.

Guild of Students President Alice Young said: “This is testament to the enormous effort the executive committee, clubs and societies – many of which are course-specific – have put in over the past year, especially with most activities and events having to be online.

“Our Disabled Society is just one example of this, scooping a national award in May for being a pillar of support and inspiring students during the pandemic.”

Some degree courses did particularly well in the survey. The university’s Childhood Education Studies (BA Hons) online degree scored a perfect 100% for student satisfaction, while Sports Therapy BSc (Hons) and Professional Chef FdA, raised the bar with 90% student satisfaction.

Students completing this year’s survey were asked 27 questions relating to the teaching on their course, learning opportunities, assessment and feedback, academic support, organisation and management, learning resources, learning community, student voice and students’ union.

Find out more about the university’s support services.