Summer 2022, like each summer two decades before, saw countless university staff across the UK on the edge of their seats for the annual release of metrics that would inform their universities’ reputation for the year after. Poised with press releases, image designs at the ready, and clearing campaigns set to launch, the annual National Student Survey (NSS) posts were at the starting lines, as they were for the prior 15 years of UK higher education.
But now in 2023, the landscape has changed and the National Student Survey is no longer alone as the headline university performance indicator. ‘NSS day’ last year was dominated by other news items relating to a certain Prime Minister, and despite several Google searches, we find that the National Student Survey of 2022 received almost no coverage in the press.
Compare this to the mid-2010s, when the NSS was treated as make or break publicity for institutions with major news outlets speaking of the big winners and losers, the movers and shakers in student satisfaction. Satisfaction, combined with historic reputation and Research Excellence Framework (REF) (previously Research Assessment Exercise) measures previously ruled supreme in university reputation.
