Less than one percent of students took part in the Times’ satisfaction rankings

Last week, Warwick was ranked 17th in the UK for student satisfaction by Times Higher Education (THE) magazine.

However, the Boar can reveal that THE included on average less than one percent of the student population of 113 UK universities surveyed to produce its rankings.

The London-based magazine is otherwise best known for producing the THE World University Rankings and its reputation rankings.

Its annual Student Experience Survey saw students give their universities a numerical rating on a range of criteria including workload, industry connections, welfare support and facilities.

Analysing data released by the Times reveals that rankings were based on the opinions of between 0.25-2.7 percent of the universities’ student bodies.

The highest number of respondents to the survey was 307 from the University of Nottingham, though that represents less than 1 percent of the University’s student body.

The best-represented university was London’s Royal Veterinary College with 2.7 percent of its 2,120 students taking part in the survey.

The worst was the University of East London with only 0.25 percent participation.

171 Warwick students took part in the survey, amounting to 0.6 percent of the University’s 27,440-strong student body.

Of over 2 million students enrolled in higher education in the UK, only 14,697 responses were collected to produce THE’s satisfaction ratings, a total of 0.6 percent of the country’s university students.

The data was compiled by UK research agency YouthSight. A representative of the agency told the Boar that it drew its results from students who were members of its “OpinionPanel” of young people from across the country who sign up to take part in surveys, and may receive rewards such as Amazon vouchers for their participation.

The Student Experience Survey is the only survey that YouthSight conduct for Times Higher Education.

NOTES ON THE DATA

Numbers of students from each university were taken from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency’s (HESA) latest release for student numbers in 2013-14.

Enrolment figures for academic year 2014-15 have not yet been released by HESA, but given the relative insignificance of past fluctuations in UK student numbers (number of students enrolled fell by less than 2 percent from 2012-13 to 2013-14), the Boar predicts that the representativeness of the THE survey is unlikely to be affected significantly by changes in intake for 2014-15..

As the news release ranked universities based on “student” satisfaction the Boar’s analysis combines numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate students in the UK.

The results, with the Boar‘s added analysis and HESA figures, are available to download here: student-experience-survey-2015-results