University student satisfaction drops to new low in 2020

A new survey conducted during the pandemic shows that student satisfaction with university education in Australia dropped sharply in 2020, reaching its lowest level since the survey began in 2012, writes Naaman Zhou for The Guardian.

On average, only 68.4% of students nationally said they were satisfied with their undergraduate education during the pandemic-hit year, down 10 percentage points from 78.4% in 2019. The Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching survey, which has surveyed undergraduates since 2012, polled 565,829 students from 29 universities, and 70,266 from 35 non-university higher education providers.

Among the broad decline in satisfaction, students said “learner engagement” specifically suffered. For the first time since the survey began, a minority of students said they were satisfied with learner engagement, at only 43.2% (down from 59.9% in 2019). However, students said that teaching quality itself remained high – dropping only from 80.9% to 77.6%.
Full report on The Guardian site