Nine out of ten students have given a powerful seal of approval to their degree courses at the University of Essex, reinforcing Essex’s place in the top 20 mainstream English universities.
The national survey of student satisfaction for 2012 placed Essex 17th in England for overall satisfaction, with 89 per cent of students expressing overall satisfaction with their course, compared with a national average of 85 per cent.
Essex’s focus on providing an outstanding campus-based student experience, combined with a commitment to excellence in research-led teaching has ensured consistently high scores over the past five years.
Eighty-seven per cent of students expressed satisfaction with the teaching on their course, one per cent up on last year, with 82 per cent satisfaction for organisation and management. Half of the University’s 16 schools, departments and centres which were covered by the National Student Survey achieved overall satisfaction scores of 90 per cent or above. The Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies achieved 100 per cent satisfaction, History 97 per cent and Government and Language and Linguistics each achieved 94 per cent.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Forster said: “We will not be complacent. As a leading research university, we are committed to excellence in the education we provide for our students and ensuring our staff are great teachers. Our programme of investing £200 million in new buildings, facilities and resources aims to further improve the learning experience for our students.”
Professor Forster stressed that one of the University’s highest priorities was student employability, with more still to be done to provide students with the best possible personal development opportunities to equip them with the skills, knowledge and experience to succeed in the job market. Recent initiatives include Essex Abroad, which aims to increase numbers of students studying, working or volunteering abroad during their time at the University, and Languages for All, which offers students free language tuition.
“We’re pleased to see that the majority of third year students at the University are satisfied with their course,” said Zain Kukaswadia, Vice President Education for the Students’ Union. “As the representative body of students at Essex we work closely with the University, both in terms of encouraging student feedback in this survey and in delivering services and support that have a positive impact on the student experience.”
“We echo the priority of the Vice-Chancellor around employability and are working closely with the University to continue to develop students’ skills and experience so that they stand out from the crowd in an increasingly competitive job market”.
Undertaken on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the National Student Survey was completed by 287,000 students at 154 higher education institutions and 106 further education colleges across the country. Full details are available from the Unistats website at: http://unistats.direct.gov.uk.
A new UK-wide information resource, the Key Information Set (KIS), is also available, to help students and prospective students to make informed decisions about universities and courses, including information about student satisfaction, graduate employability, tuition fees and finance, and accommodation.