This site is all about the championing of students to enable them to get the best deal from all the competing universities out there, so we were dead chuffed when we heard about this little exercise by a team of consultants:

They posed as prospective students to test how good a customer service universities deliver in practice. The first victim was Sheffield University, who recieved a pretty poor grade all in all. The consultants headline findings were: 1 in 5 phone callers who asked for info recieved nothing, 1 in 3 callers leaving voice mail requesting a call back weren’t called while 30% of phone enquirers failed to get through after 3 attempts. Furthermore, 7 departments took more than a month to send requested material, with 1 department taking a staggering 3 months to reply.

In a response notable only for its obfuscation, deceit, and marketing babble, the Director of Student recruitment and marketing (thinly disguised propaganda to you and me) Jane Chafer stated that these results failed to highlight “the many areas of excellence within the university” and that she realised students expectations of the university were “changing” and that they wished to “continually improve and challenge themselves” to “enhance the service they offered” - all of which means their going to try better, but deny their crap.

What do these poor results show at Sheffield? We think they illustrate that staff-student ratios matter, and effect all areas of university life!

Edit: spelling (a pedant)

The Times Higher education awards are out and the winner for ‘best student experience’ is Loughborough; that means that their students rated the lecturers, the courses, the social life and the student union higher than any other place in the UK. Last years winner was Swansea.
It seems that the extra ciriclua activities and the social life is what won it, that in combination with high levels of satisfaction for academic standards. Cambridge came second in student satisfaction, followed by third place St Andrews.

Apparently some new universities also put in a good performance, with the universities of Chester, Portsmouth and Central Lancashire coming in the top 30.