{"id":6293,"date":"2015-04-10T07:03:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T07:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6293"},"modified":"2015-04-10T07:03:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T07:03:29","slug":"its-no-good-for-esd-in-uk-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/04\/10\/its-no-good-for-esd-in-uk-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"It's no 'good for ESD' in UK universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

It's been another good week for the University of Bath as it rises meteorically from 2nd place to 1st in the Times Higher Education<\/em> student experience survey<\/a> (2015). \u00a0Bath is rated highly by students in all 21 aspects covered by the\u00a0poll, and performs strongly on the quality of its academic staff, degree courses, links with industry, and teaching facilities. \u00a0The survey involved 14,697\u00a0students from\u00a0113\u00a0universities.<\/p>\n

\"bath_2509077b\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The 21 aspects that were the focus of the survey were:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. High-quality staff\/lectures<\/li>\n
  2. Helpful\/interested staff<\/li>\n
  3. Well-structured courses<\/li>\n
  4. Good social life<\/li>\n
  5. Good community atmosphere<\/li>\n
  6. Good extracurricular activities\/societies<\/li>\n
  7. Good environment on campus\/around university<\/li>\n
  8. High-quality facilities<\/li>\n
  9. Personal requirements catered for<\/li>\n
  10. Good students' union<\/li>\n
  11. Good support\/welfare<\/li>\n
  12. Good personal relationship with teaching staff<\/li>\n
  13. Centralised\/convenient facilities<\/li>\n
  14. Good industry connections<\/li>\n
  15. Good accommodation<\/li>\n
  16. Good security<\/li>\n
  17. Cheap shop\/bar\/amenities<\/li>\n
  18. Tuition in small groups<\/li>\n
  19. Good library and library opening hours<\/li>\n
  20. Fair workload<\/li>\n
  21. Good sports facilities<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As anyone who reads this blog regularly, I always keep my Kipling<\/a> to hand when viewing such data. \u00a0It's certainly always good to wonder about methodology. \u00a0We're told by the THE that:<\/p>\n

    \"YouthSight<\/a> is the source of the data that have been used to compile the table of results for the Times Higher Education Student Experience Survey, and it retains ownership of those data. \u00a0Each higher education institution\u2019s overall score has been indexed to give a percentage of the maximum score attainable. \u00a0For each of the 21 attributes, students were given a seven-point scale and asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the statements based on their university experience. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    When you look at the spreadsheet of results, you\u00a0find that the number of students responding in each institution is in the low hundreds. \u00a0At best, it was 307. \u00a0At worst, it was 51.<\/p>\n

    Much more significantly, of course, is the missing\u00a022nd issue:\u00a0\"Good for ESD\". \u00a0This is a serious omission which is hard to square with NUS \/ HEA data showing how much students value sustainability. \u00a0It\u00a0may go some way to explain the poor showing in this survey of some of the top 10\u00a0people 'n' planet<\/em><\/a> institutions:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Plymouth (47)<\/li>\n
    2. Worcester (64)<\/li>\n
    3. MMU (74)<\/li>\n
    4. Nottingham Trent (31=)<\/li>\n
    5. City (109)<\/li>\n
    6. Gloucestershire (94)<\/li>\n
    7. Bournemouth (76=)<\/li>\n
    8. Trinity St. David (not included<\/em>)<\/li>\n
    9. Edinburgh Napier (95)<\/li>\n
    10. Glasgow Caledonian (85)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      It's been another good week for the University of Bath as it rises meteorically from 2nd place to 1st in the Times Higher Education student experience survey (2015). \u00a0Bath is rated highly by students in all 21 aspects covered by...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}