PODCAST: NSS, campus return, UCAS, student politics

This week on the podcast we discuss the impending review of the National Student Survey and what’s going on with the great return to campus. We also consider the latest student numbers figures from UCAS, look at a report on students’ unions and ask why students might be “leaning left”.

With Jenny Shaw, Student Experience Director at Unite Students; and Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

Items this week

• A month on from A level results day, UCAS chief executive Clare Marchant finds cause for cautious celebration in the persistence of demand for higher education.
• We have the remit of the OfS "bureaucracy review" of the national student survey. David Kernohan has questions.
• Jim Dickinson wonders whether new HEPI/YouthSight student polling data tells us more about students' politics or parties' attempts to court them.
• New Covid restrictions could prevent student mixing for most of the academic year. Jim Dickinson calls for coordinated action that addresses a growing belonging problem.

Correlate

In an article this week DK looked for correlation between "unexplained" firsts and 2:1s and better than benchmark NSS results. He didn't find it, but he did get a bit of pushback that he should be looking at the traditional (teaching institution, Q27 satisfaction) measure rather than messing about with benchmarks. So straight ahead student satisfaction against grade inflation - are students that get better results satisfied students? Yes, but does it correlate?

Full screen

Of course it doesn't. R squared is an unhealthy 0.0006 - it's pretty much random. This puts a hole in another DfE data-driven policy wheeze, but in all honesty this isn't all that difficult to do these days. Data is from OfS, and is therefore England only. A few providers didn't meet the threshold to get NSS results, so where the data doesn't exist I've not plotted it

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