NSS Who Cares!

National Student Survey results are out this week.  Do we really care?  Does anyone even read them? Surely it's all a big scam anyway?

Right now I'm sat on a train traveling from Oxford to London on my way to NUS HQ for some Advanced Training on the NSS for SU Officers and staff. Now I must apologise for the excessive use of acronyms and can confirm that I have not accidentally spilled my breakfast of alphabet soup.  So if you are reading this blog I must assume that you either know me or have some interest in Higher Education, Representation or some form of Quality Assurance.  For anyone who's accidentally stumbled across this blog entry, perhaps tricked by the letters N.S.S,  I suggest you find a suitable dating website as there definitely are no strings attached to this blog.

So this entry is all about the National Student Survey.  Tomorrow the embargoed versions will be made available to me and I can finally find out if Oxford Brookes SU have managed to pull themselves off the bottom of the pile of disgraced Unions that were slapped with a satisfaction score by students of a pitiful 36%.  At this point I must also point out that this was a lowly position shared with that other great university "down the hill",  Oxford University.  So you can probably guess that the feeling of most people here is to pull away from Oxford.  Now it's not as clear cut as that, I have an explanation of why we scored so low.

I have my own personal opinions on the NSS, it's real value and perception by students.  I want to tell you about the polishing of figures that universities do in order to use the results as a marketing and recruitment tool. I need to tell you about the university staff who use the dreaded Question 23 to bash the SU in an attempt to divert attention away from themselves and their yearly averaging score.  I must tell you about the universities who stand separate to their SU that score low, but embrace their SU if  it scores highly. And finally I need to show you who are the people that are driving traffic to the Unistats website. 

Now I know what you're thinking, this is certainly looking like a meaty blog here!  I admit, I'm  buzzing at the chance to air these views and put a few things into perspective.  So, bare with me as my train finally pulls into Paddington.  Let me upload this entry and I will add the meat and veg  once I'm done at NUS .