June 2017
Featured in this insight: Education
Survey finds universities’ ‘value for money’ is falling according to students:The Student Academic Experience Survey collects responses from 14,000 students across the UK and has revealed that the ‘value for money’ of universities in England, has dropped to an all-time low of 35%.
This statistic has dropped dramatically from 53%, which was where the figure stood five years ago. However, in Scotland, where students don’t have to pay tuition fees, 56% of students believe that they are getting their money’s worth. Wales came in second with 47%, with Northern Ireland not too far behind at 42%. England, on the other hand, was the lowest with only 32% of students thinking their higher education was ‘value for money’.
Moreover, the amount of people saying university is ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ value has almost doubled since 2012. This rapid change could be due to the change in tuition fees, as they are predicted to increase again in the autumn. Furthermore, England, with the highest tuition fees, has the lowest opinion on value for money, whereas Scotland, with no tuition fees, has the highest opinion on ‘value for money’.
In addition, students that study subjects such as history, where pupils only receive eight hours of teaching a week, mostly think that their quality of teaching is not equal to their student expenditure. While students that study something like medicine, where, on average, they receive 17 hours of teaching time a week, are more likely to be satisfied with the value of the education they are receiving.
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