National Student Survey review suggests postgraduate questionnaire

The NSS is a very valuable tool for individual universities, providing feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their degree programmes - and my university certainly pays very careful attention to this feedback. The problem is that by publishing the data for all institutions, the NSS has become a tool for ranking universities/degree programmes. To ensure a good score, too much effort is put into "the student experience", often at the expense of educational rigour. As a result, challenging but essential course material can be toned down for fear of harming said "student experience" and thereby the university's rank in the league tables. This perhaps would not matter if our student, and the UK itself, were not having to compete in a global educational, industrial and financial market place.