Nearly half of all students thought their degree offered poor value for money this year, according to a survey that sheds light on the scale of student anger with their universities’ response to the pandemic.
Twice as many students thought their courses offered poor value (44%) than in 2019-20, despite pandemic disruption that year, according to the survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank. The increase is thought to reflect a view among students that universities misled them about how much in-person teaching they could expect this year.
This year is the first in which more students felt let down by their courses than were satisfied since the survey began 15 years ago. Students were unhappy with the cost of tuition as well as the lack of contact hours and in-person teaching, commenting that online learning “isn’t worth £9k” and “is extremely different to in-person learning”.