UK: Student satisfaction survey manipulated

Tougher guidelines are to be issued to warn universities against manipulating the results of a league table of student satisfaction. The Higher Education Funding Council says it will issue these for the next National Student Survey. Last week lecturers at Kingston University were revealed to have told students only to put positive comments in this official national survey, reports BBC News.


The Cambridge students' union now says it doubts the survey's credibility. An audio recording showed that students at Kingston had been told by lecturers to falsify their responses to improve the university's ranking. Universities secretary John Denham told the House of Commons he condemned this attempt to distort the survey. Hundreds of emails sent to the BBC News website have challenged the claim that this was an isolated incident. One email said the survey was being used for "reputation management".
Full report on BBC News