Revealed: The Russell Group unis where students are least satisfied with their teaching

Almost a quarter of students at Russell Group universities are not satisfied with the quality of their teaching, according to a new university league table.

The Complete University Guide 2024 found on average 76 per cent of students at Russell Group unis were satisfied with their university’s teaching in new data revealed today.

Students at Edinburgh, Leeds and Newcastle are most likely to be unhappy with the quality of their course. All three universities finished last with 26 per cent of students surveyed saying they were unsatisfied.

The data was compiled by analysing the results of the 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) which asks all final-year undergraduate students to score their university experience.

The NSS asked students 25 different questions about different aspects of teaching on their course. These included:

• How good are teaching staff at explaining things?
• How often do teaching staff make the subject engaging?
• How often does your course challenge you to achieve your best work?
• How easy was it to contact teaching staff when you needed to
• How often does feedback help you to improve your work?

The final of the 25 questions asked students to what extent they believe their Students’ Union represents students’ academic interests. For the purposes of the Complete University Guide ranking, the results to this question were omitted.

Because the survey is a measure of student opinion, it is not necessarily a direct measure of quality and could be influenced by biases. For example, if you go to a very highly-ranked university, you may have higher expectations about the standard of teaching and score your university more harshly.

Students at universities perceived to be less prestigious may have lower expectations and be pleasantly surprised with the level of teaching from their lecturers.

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This might explain why, when assessing student satisfaction rates across all British universities, no Russell Group university makes the top ten.

Warwick is the best performing Russell Group university for student satisfaction but it only finishes 17th nationally, out of 128 universities.

Students at University of Bolton, Plymouth Marjon and Aberystwyth all rate the quality of their teaching above any Russell Group.

A ranking of Russell Group universities based on student satisfaction rates in 2024

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