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Key points
- University of Divinity in Melbourne has been voted by students as having the highest-quality overall educational experience.
- Melbourne, Monash, Sydney and UNSW have some of the least satisfied students.
- Education expert Claire Field says the Group of Eight universities need to better support students.
- Most universities’ student ratings for the quality of entire educational experience increased from 2021 to 2022.
Small, religious and private universities have Australia’s happiest students, while Group of Eight institutions Melbourne, Monash, Sydney and University of NSW have some of the least satisfied students in the country.
The major universities have pushed back against new data that shows they have some of the nation’s least satisfied students, as they point to their strong employment outcomes for graduates – and the high expectations students set for them.
Vice chancellor Peter Sherlock (front) with students and alumni of the University of Divinity (from left) Sarah Cook, Andrew Hateley-Browne, Carolyn Alsen, Adam Couchman and Stephen Reid.Credit: Simon Schluter
The government-backed Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching student experience survey interviewed 244,000 undergraduates and postgraduates to measure student support, learning resources, skills development, learner engagement and teaching quality at Australia’s 42 universities.
The nation’s smallest university, the University of Divinity in Melbourne’s Box Hill, has been voted by students as having the highest-quality overall educational experience in Australia in four of the past six years.
“We know that 91 per cent of our students overall are satisfied with their experience,” said University of Divinity vice chancellor Professor Peter Sherlock. “That’s fantastic news. But I keep saying, ‘What do we do with that other nine per cent?’ ”
Avondale University – a small Seventh Day Adventist institution outside Newcastle – had the second-happiest students.
The University of Divinity was established in 1910 by a group of churches and the Victorian government to provide theology degrees for ministers. It now provides degrees in theology, philosophy and spirituality in 12 colleges across Australia, as well as the country’s first Indigenous theology program.
Sherlock attributed the university’s results to its small size – it has 1700 students, with maximum class sizes of 30 – and the commitment of staff and students.
When a student is absent, the teacher checks in with them. And students tend to be older and know themselves: some want to be a priest or minister; others would like to deepen their faith; and the remainder are studying for work, such as becoming a counsellor or chaplain.
“People are choosing what they want to study … rather than, ‘I’ve just left school, I should go to uni and I’m not quite sure what I want to do,’ ” said Sherlock.
The survey found that most universities’ student ratings for the quality of the entire educational experience increased from 2021 to 2022.
Higher education consultant Claire Field said student feedback showed the Group of Eight universities – Australian National University, Queensland, WA, Adelaide, Monash, Melbourne, UNSW and Sydney – needed to invest more in supporting students who were paying a lot for degrees. The price of tertiary education has more than doubled over the past two decades – one of the fastest-growing expenses in the country.
“It begs the question as to how some of our highly regarded, well-ranked research-intensive universities are doing very poorly and privates and other public universities like [higher-performing] Edith Cowan are doing so much better,” she said.
“It’s good to get good employment outcomes, but if you’ve had a miserable, terrible time and really struggled with your studies, that’s not great either.”
Field said students wanted engaged lecturers. “We also have problems with wage underpayments in some well-regarded universities, so if their staff are highly casualised, do they have sufficient time to give feedback to students?
“We also know that young people the world over have struggled with mental health because of the pandemic. So there’s another question: what is it that Edith Cowan or Swinburne are doing differently with their support to students?”
But UNSW’s deputy vice chancellor of academic quality, Professor Merlin Crossley, said one could not compare a small university with the Group of Eight.
“They’re just not comparable. They know the names of all their students. And that’s great, that’s great. But then their employment outcomes aren’t the same as ours,” he said.
Crossley said UNSW, which had the fourth-least-satisfied students last year, had work to do. “These numbers are complicated by things like COVID, things like student mix, things like discipline,” he said.
“Our university is a fairly intense university. We do push students a little bit out of their comfort zone, and if you’re out of your comfort zone, you might feel a bit comfortable.”
The University of Sydney said its student survey results were improving and it was working closely to lift student experience.
Monash University said recent surveys of more than 7000 students found 85 per cent had a strong sense of belonging. It also said: “Comparing institutions on the basis of satisfaction can be problematic, given the subjective nature of satisfaction judgments and the fact that students’ expectations of their higher education may vary considerably.”
The University of Melbourne was contacted for comment.
Andrew Hateley-Browne, 35, is a web developer by day who has followed his interest in radical religious movements in 19th-century Australia into a graduate diploma in divinity at the University of Divinity.
“I’ve always felt that I’ve had a lot of access to my lecturers and that kind of personal touch. Really being able to curate my academic experience here has been striking. I think it’s probably easy to get lost at other universities. My experience here has been I’ve had access to a lot of interesting academic opportunities.”
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