The university courses where students make friends – and the ones where they don’t

When UNSW social science student Amali Bridgen attended her first class on campus, she was excited to find her people. But she soon realised not everyone showed up to lectures and, if they did, they weren’t focused on making friends.

“When you’re in class, people are there just to learn,” she said. “We have such short terms as well, they only last 10 weeks … so we don’t get that much time to form long-term connections.”

University of NSW student Sienna Eswaran (centre) with uni friends Amali Bridgen (right) and Chloe.Credit: Janie Barrett.

Half of undergraduates in some degrees report struggling with social connection, according to a Herald analysis of data from the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching 2023 survey.

Students say the convenience of course content being available online has come at the cost of connecting with their peers.

Fixed-cohort programs such as medicine and pharmacy, where students move through classes together, had the highest scores for social connection.

Degrees in teaching, arts and humanities scored poorly, as did, unsurprisingly, institutions with large online course offerings.

Emeritus Professor David Geelan said universities had to straddle the competing demands for convenience and social interaction from students.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

University of Notre Dame education expert Emeritus Professor David Geelan said, in previous decades, most students could survive on study support payments without a need to work, so would therefore spend more time on campus.

“You would spend social time with your peers in your class after, and outside in between classes, whereas now it really is, drive into campus, attend class, go back to work,” he said.

“Some students desperately want to be on campus. Some students desperately want it to be online … and a certain number of students will just hate and loathe the online course and not be interested.”

University of Sydney pro vice chancellor of teaching and learning Adam Bridgeman said their research showed students’ sense of belonging was developed through shared experiences in the classroom.

Bridgeman said relationships can be fostered in liberal arts degrees via structural changes to timetabling and lessons that maximise interaction and conversation.

“That’s why we’ve introduced a series of activities designed to build strong relationships in tutorial classes across every undergraduate degree,” he said.

Australian Catholic University has taken a similar approach with timetabling to ensure students are socially connected.

“We recognise that this doesn’t happen equally across all disciplines or study modes, and the sector as a whole has been addressing this since the COVID pandemic saw many students isolated,” its deputy vice chancellor of education, Professor Tania Broadley, said.

“We’ve seen success with programs like our peer-assisted study sessions and student mentoring initiatives, which help build a sense of community.”

A UNSW spokeswoman said they had given teaching staff “in-classroom belonging toolkits” to boost social connection.

A UTS spokeswoman said its students who volunteer or participate in community-focused activities reported increased engagement and success. About 18,000 UTS students were in a club last year.

UNSW student Amali Bridgen found a friend in law and arts student Sienna Eswaran, with whom she takes Spanish – although, she says, some classes have been better than others for meeting friends.

“When we were taking this [Spanish] course last term, half of it was online,” Bridgen says. “I found it really hard to learn and engage with the other students. Whereas this term, everything’s in-person and our classes are longer, and I prefer that.”

Eswaran said tutors played a role in fostering social connection. “Often [tutors] are very knowledgeable … however, they don’t understand how to engage the class, and how to get the class talking with each other.”

While universities with large online course offerings scored worse for students’ social interactions, the same institutions had high scores for teaching.

Undergraduate degrees in rehabilitation as well as social work at The University of Notre Dame scored the highest in the survey for teaching practices. Engineering at Australian Catholic University also received a positive teaching rating from 90 per cent of those surveyed.

Canberra University Professor Barney Dalgarno cautioned that the surveys did not differentiate between students who did their course online or part-time.

He also noted that some students might choose a university based on its standing in international league tables – which were often based on research output of academics.

“The research-based rankings … don’t correlate at all with the quality of an undergraduate’s experience in their classes,” he said.

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