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A Point of View: Are students getting their money's worth?

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Are students getting their money's worth?

30/11/2012

BBC Radio 4 - A Point of View, Are students getting their money's worth?

Mary Beard reflects on why 'customer satisfaction' surveys have no place in universities.

Mary Beard reflects on why 'customer satisfaction' surveys have no place in universities, and pines for the days when students could tell a professor their lectures were rubbish.

Mary Beard reflects on why universities are being consumed by "customer satisfaction" surveys. 

"When you're paying up to £9000 a year for the privilege of being at university, you want to make it pretty clear if you feel you're not getting your money's worth", she writes. 

But the deluge of forms - asking students for their views on the content, presentation, organisation of the course and the quality of the handouts will - she argues, do little to improve "the learning experience". 

She admits having a "tweak of nostalgia for that old era before the tick-box, when brave students would tell their famous professors to their face that their lectures were rubbish"! 

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

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