National Student Survey 2016 - Does it Matter to Postgraduates?

If you're reading this post, you're probably considering a Masters degree next year. You may even be looking for one starting this year.

Comparing courses and reading guides to different postgraduate study options is great, but what if you could find out exactly what previous students thought of your university?

Well, you can. Sort of.

This month saw the publication of the National Student Survey (NSS): a large-scale poll of student satisfaction at all publically-funded UK universities.

We've reproduced the top universities in the 2016 NSS at the end of this post. First though, it's worth explaining exactly what the NSS is, how it works - and how you can use it as a postgraduate.

What is the National Student Survey?

If you've recently completed an undergraduate degree in the UK you probably took part in the 2016 NSS. If so, you may be pleased to know that the survey is taken very seriously. Information from the NSS helps officially evaluate universities' performance and will soon have an effect on the tuition fees they can charge.

Better yet, core NSS results are freely available to students. There's just one catch. And you've probably guessed what it is.

The NSS is an undergraduate survey. No Masters-level students are included.

But that doesn't mean the NSS is of no interest at all to prospective postgraduates - particularly those considering taught courses. You may be about to study at a different level, but many of the things that mattered during your undergraduate degree will still matter to your Masters:

The attitude and expertise of a university's lecturers, the quality of its library resources and the fairness of its assessments - all of these will make a difference to your postgraduate experience. And all of them are measured in some way by the NSS.

That said, there's no getting away from the fact that the NSS isn't a postgraduate survey and some of the questions it asks won't be as relevant to Masters students.

We've taken a closer look at each of them, below.

The first section of the NSS evaluates university teaching. It asks whether university staff explain concepts effectively, whether they make the subject interesting, whether they appear enthusiastic and how intellectually stimulating the end result is.

Does it matter to postgrads?

Some aspects of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching are comparable. Lectures will probably be less common, but you'll still learn in a 'small-group' classroom or seminar setting, with discussion lead by your tutor.

This means that some undergraduate feedback about classes and teaching could be worth taking into account. But you'll need to remember that none of this feedback concerns postgraduate modules or classes, most of which are smaller, with a different group dynamic. Staff may naturally be more enthusiastic about specialist course content - and increased student contributions may make sessions more engaging.

The NSS also doesn't address some areas of teaching that are important to postgraduates - such as support for independent study and more advanced academic development.

The second part of the NSS asks students about the way their work has been marked and the quality of the feedback they have received.

Does it matter to postgrads?

Well, your Masters-level work will still need to be marked and feedback given. Taught courses will also use similar assessment methods, with coursework essays or similar tasks assigned for each module. By the same token, you'll want the same things from assessment and feedback as you did when you were an undergraduate: punctuality, clarity, fairness and usefulness.

The differences between undergraduate and postgraduate assessment have more to do with the way feedback is presented. A Masters degree will normally have less students on it. This can allow tutors to spend more time producing and explaining feedback. Some staff may actually arrange to discuss postgraduate work in one-to-one tutorials as a matter of course.

This means that the NSS is broadly useful, but may not always reflect the way in which postgraduate feedback is managed.

This part of the NSS asks students whether they have received sufficient advice and assistance with their degree and whether staff have been available to them when needed

Does it matter to postgrads?

Academic support is one of the few parts of the NSS that isn't present on the postgraduate-specific PTES. This is largely because the kind of assistance an undergraduate needs is generally quite different.

As a Masters student you'll already be familiar with the way university learning works and will need less pastoral support and orientation. You may also have greater routine access to staff, with smaller teaching groups and more time for one-to-one discussion.

This doesn't mean the NSS is completely irrelevant though. The general availability and approachability of staff can still be important - particularly if you're seeking advice on PhD study or other outcomes from your Masters degree.

Questions here focus on the way courses are run and administered, asking students to say whether timetable is maintained and how effectively changes are communicated.

Does it matter to postgrads?

A university's ability to effectively deliver its promised degree programmes is important at every level of study. Therefore, nothing in this section is really specific to undergraduate or postgraduate students.

You may find that your Masters is organised more flexibly, but scheduled classes and other elements should still run smoothly and reliably. The NSS may help you confirm whether this is the case.

The NSS asks students about the quality of library and IT facilities, as well as the availability of any specialist equipment required for their course.

Does it matter to postgrads?

This is potentially one of the most important areas of the NSS for postgraduate students. The quality of a university's facilities and resources can make or break a successful Masters degree - particularly when carrying out research.

The feedback undergraduates give the NSS won't bear these requirements in mind, but you can take a positive NSS score as a good sign. It's possible that a university may meet the needs of undergraduates better than postgraduates, but investment in resources and facilities will tend to benefit students at all levels of study.

These questions focus on a student's sense of their own academic and personal growth in areas such as self-confidence, communication skills and problem solving.

Does it matter for postgrads?

In theory, yes. A university degree should have successful learning and development outcomes regardless of the qualification it awards. You should also come out of your Masters having further developed the skills that matter to undergraduates.

The limitation of the NSS in this area is that development on a three-year undergraduate degree may be very different to that on a one-year Masters. It's likely to be more gradual, but also more fundamental, as students get to grips with the independence and challenges of university-level work.

A Masters shouldn't need to develop these in the same way. It should also focus on slightly different skills - including advanced academic competency, research methodologies and the ability to work as an independent scholar.

The NSS ends by asking students about their overall opinion of the course they've studied. This metric is often used to rank universities as a whole by student satisfaction

Does it matter for postgrads?

The overall satisfaction rating is taken very seriously by universities and the organisations that evaluate them. But, as with the rest of the NSS, students are responding about an undergraduate course, not a Masters - and the experience of studying the two can be very different.

Still, a high student satisfaction score definitely says something good about a university. We've reproduced the scores for 2016 in the table below.

This table gives the top 20 placed UK universities in the UK, based on their overall student satisfaction scores in the 2016 NSS.

Remember that this only measures student satisfaction at undergraduate level. You can use this as one indicator of a university's performance, but shouldn't expect it to fully reflect the quality of postgraduate programmes.

More detailed results from the NSS are available on the official unistats website. This provides information for individual subjects and degree programmes. The catch, as with everything else about the NSS, is that only postgraduate courses are included.

As discussed above, the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) is similar to the NSS. However, its coverage is more limited and its results are only available to participating universities.

It's possible that a postgraduate NSS could be introduced in future though. This is because student satisfaction is one of the metrics used by the new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This will eventually apply to taught postgraduate degrees and - if so - if will need to draw on a comprehensive student survey.

Needless to say, we'll have coverage of any new survey data that might be of use to prospective Masters students. You can stay updated via our newsletter.