Students have rated The University of Birmingham second from top amongst English Russell Group institutions for teaching in the 2018 National Student Survey (NSS) results.
The NSS – the most comprehensive measure of student satisfaction within higher education – has awarded the University of Birmingham an overall satisfaction mark of 86%, ranking it fifth out of 24 leading UK universities in the Russell Group for overall satisfaction. In addition, students on 16 of the University’s programmes returned scores of 100% satisfaction.
On teaching, 90% of students responding to the survey felt that their course was intellectually stimulating and said that staff were good at explaining things.
Commenting on the results, University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood said:
“As a world-class university, student experience is a key priority for us and these results reflect our hard work to provide the very best teaching, which in addition to a strong student satisfaction score is also ranked as TEF Gold. We invest in our staff, in modern and innovative facilities for our students and creative ways of teaching and providing academic challenge.
“Students will continue to be at the heart of our work to deliver outstanding teaching in a global research-intensive university.”
Responses from students to the survey reflect recent work to invest in learning resources at the University, including our sector leading library facilities and improvements to Wi-Fi connectivity across campus. Questions relating to IT, library facilities and access to course-specific resources all show a significant improvement on 2017.
For further enquiries, please contact Dominic Benson, Deputy Director of Communications, University of Birmingham on +44(0)1214145134. For out of hours media enquiries, please call: +44 (0) 7789 921 165.
The NSS covers mainly final-year undergraduates studying for higher education qualifications at UK higher education providers and at further education colleges in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The survey is funded by the four UK higher education regulatory/funding bodies (the Office for Students, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Economy Northern Ireland), and Health Education England.
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions and is rated Teaching Excellence Framework gold. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries.