Bond and Edith Cowan universities take a personal approach to their students

Bond and Edith Cowan universities reveal why they consistently perform very well in student experience surveys.

Bond University consistently scores highly for student experience

Bond University, a private institution on the Gold Coast, says one of the secrets to its stellar performance in the federal government’s annual survey of student experience is its personalised approach to students.

“Students are individuals, not just part of a large class,” Bond provost Keitha Dunstan said.

In the 2022 Student Experience Survey released this week Bond University again came in near the top as judged by its students in five key areas: skill development, learner engagement, teaching quality, student support and learning resources.

Bond charges $97,200 for a bachelor degree, which is more than twice as much as an arts or business degree at a public university. It has the ability to focus on the student experience and the results are clear in the survey.

This year 86.1 per cent of Bond undergraduates rated their student experience as positive, higher than any other university apart from two small religious institutions, Avondale University and the University of Divinity.

Professor Dunstan said Bond insisted on its undergraduates attending face-to-face classes, and class sized were small – about 30 in its interactive lectures (which it calls forums) and a maximum of 15 in tutorials.

She said academics knew their students by name. “If they don’t attend a class we email them asking, ‘Hope you’re OK, will we see you next week’,” Professor Dunstan said.

Bond is a consistent performer through the years, near the top of the student experience.

But so is Perth-based Edith Cowan University, a public institution that does not have Bond’s advantage of generous funding from high fees.

This year ECU is the top public university in the student experience survey with 81.8 per cent of its undergraduates saying their educational experience is positive.

ECU acting vice-chancellor Arshad Omari said a personalised approach to students was also critical at his university. He said issues for each student were different and the university helped academic staff to address them, “not just say it’s your problem”.

“We focus right from the council down to the classroom on quality of teaching,” he said. “We are constantly monitoring and measuring the various indicators of student success and experience.”

Professor Omari said ECU had strong staff engagement and all staff were encouraged to interact with students. They were urged in induction to say hello, he said.

However large, research-intensive universities often perform poorly in the student experience survey and this year four top universities – the ones to which high ATAR students aspire – clustered near the bottom. The University of Sydney was rated positively by only 68.8 per cent of its students, with UNSW at 69.9 per cent, the University of Melbourne at 71.8 per cent and Monash University at 72.7 per cent.

Monash University deputy vice-chancellor (education) Sharon Pickering said the university was still recovering from the impact of Covid on the quality of student experience. She said a post-Covid survey of 7000 students conducted last year and this year to gauge the lingering impact of the pandemic had a positive result, finding that more than 85 per cent of students had a strong sense of belonging to the university.

University of Sydney deputy vice-chancellor (education) Joanne Wright said the university was investing heavily in a high-quality educational experience and high-quality teaching, which was a key part of its 10-year plan. She said the university recorded the best result since 2015 in its Unit of Study Survey, which collects feedback on student experience at the unit of study level.