Almost 73 per cent of Sussex finalists responded to the first National Student Survey (NSS), which asked for their views on their degree programmes. This response rate puts Sussex at the high end of the national spectrum.
All final-year undergraduates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were asked to provide feedback on a range of topics, including: quality of teaching; assessment and feedback; academic support; organisation and management; learning resources; and personal development.
In July, Sussex and other institutions will receive anonymised results to help them identify how they can make improvements. The full results will be published on a new Teaching Quality Information (TQI) website (www.tqi.ac.uk) in September. This is intended to help future students in choosing courses and institutions.
The NSS will be repeated annually and its outcomes are likely to feature prominently in future higher education league tables.
Owen Richards, Academic Registrar, said: "Both the University and the Students' Union see real potential value in the survey, to supplement the work of the student representatives by highlighting the areas where our students think we are currently doing well, or could do better.
"We are sure to learn things from this first experience of the NSS, and we must consider how best to join up the messages coming via the NSS with those we already get from internal feedback processes."