I cast a jaundiced eye over the Guardian's university league table the other week, and not just to see how Bath was doing – rising majestically, since you ask (but keep your Kipling open at the right page).
Reading on, I was struck by how relatively badly some of those universities that stand up for (and go on about) ESD and sustainability do in student survey scores. You can see this here. How peculiar, I thought, given that HEA / NUS research tells us that these institutions are giving students what they want. Exegesis on a postcard please ...
August Update
Apparently, the University of Bath has done well in the 2013 National Student Survey … Top of the NSS Class, it seems; doubleplusgood indeed!. Hefce publishes the data, but you have to construct your own league tables as the funding council is sniffy about such matters – quite right too. Of course, when good students meet good teachers, the encounter ought to be a satisfactory one, so Bath's outcome is rather to be expected.
What puzzles me, however, is how such high levels of satisfaction are possible when ESD has so little emphasis across the institution, and we do so miserably in the green league. That's not really supposed to happen ... . Mind you, if the HEA and NUS get their way, and ESD-type questions are inserted into the NSS, Bath may not do so well. Will ESD then be embraced? Another postcard ...
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