Global Student Satisfaction 2019

[REPORT] Real stories have never been more important for prospective students. Studyportals research has shown that students want to know how other students experienced studying a specific programme as this helps them make a more informed choice about their education. That is why we created the only student-powered global university overview.

The Global Student Satisfaction Report 2019 represents an in-depth analysis of student experiences, exploring what students are content with, and where they would like to see improvements. The report slices the results by regions, allowing higher education professionals and industry experts to discover where students report having more satisfactory study experiences.

The analysis describes the data collected from more than 45 thousand reviews coming from both domestic and international students, covering over 209 nationalities and reviewing higher education institutions in over 151 countries.

Major findings

Overall, students around the world report being very satisfied with their study experience, with an average reported student satisfaction score of 4.21 on a scale from 1 to 5. Master’s and PhD students reported higher levels of satisfaction than Bachelor’s or Short courses students. Unsurprisingly, older students also reported higher levels of satisfaction than younger students. What was interesting was that international students reported being more satisfied with their study experience than domestic students, as students often cross borders for education in order to access a better-quality education than the one provided in their home country.

In addition to overall satisfaction with their study experience, students also rated their experience high in terms of admission process (4.05), student-teacher interactions (4.00), quality of programme (3.99), student diversity (3.95), quality of student life (3.93), career development (3.93), level of difficulty (3.93), campus infrastructure (3.88), with a few points of improvement as well with regards to the cost of living (3.64) and scholarships and funding (3.55).

Regional highlights

On average, universities in the Americas and Oceania outperformed their EMEA counterparts, with an average student satisfaction score of 4.04 and 3.98, respectively, as compared to 3.86 in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East taken together.

Nevertheless, Scandinavian universities ranked among the highest in terms of student satisfaction, with Iceland earning an outstanding 4.71 in the overall satisfaction category. Students consistently rated high the quality of live in the North of Europe.

Another region which ranked above average across all study experience aspects was South-east Asia. Students gave Hong Kong universities a 4.4 for average satisfaction, 4.44 to Singaporean universities for admission process, and 4.44 to Philippines universities for student diversity.

Mexican and Brazilian students are among the most satisfied students worldwide, while those studying in Latin and German-speaking Europe were most critical of their teacher interaction. Conversely, students in USA, Canada and the Near East were very satisfied with the relationship with their teachers.

The winners and the results of the global student satisfaction survey were announced on the 29^th of May during a gala ceremony at the United States Institute of Peace within the week of NAFSA – the largest international industry conference in higher education.

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