Stakes high as uni site launch aids students

STUDENTS from today will get a look behind the marketing spiel of universities with the launch of the My University website

STUDENTS from today will get a look behind the marketing spiel of universities with the launch of the Gillard government's My University website, which compares institutions on how satisfied students are, their staff numbers, dropout rates and graduate employment.

The $1.5 million site is designed to ensure accountability in the new, student demand-driven system. The government has removed imposed caps on student places with the aim of increasing the number of young people holding a degree.

But as with the My School website launched in 2010, there are concerns that blunt measures of student-staff ratios and attrition are misleading as measures of quality, and risk unfairly damaging university reputations, especially in the increasingly competitive international market.

For Australian universities, the domestic stakes have never been higher, as they are now free to poach from each other by offering as many places as they want.

Despite sector concerns that the website will be used as a proxy for quality and a basis for league tables, The Australian is aware that some universities are planning to put out statements today bragging about how well they have done on specific measures.

Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans last month acknowledged that there were problems with some indicators but said the quality of the information would be enhanced in the future.

"We know some of the information is not quite right, but we are going to publish as planned and fix it up as we go along," he said.

The Australian Technology Network of universities said reputations would be hit in the meantime. "(We have) alerted the government to the potential risks to the reputation of the sector internationally and these seem to have been discounted in the process of getting the website up and improving the data later," said Vicki Thomson, executive director of the ATN, which represents Curtin, QUT, RMIT, UTS and the University of South Australia.

National Union of Students president Donherra Walmsley said easy access to such information was a welcome change. She said while staff-student ratios were widely agreed to be a rough measure, she hoped in future universities would be required to detail actual class sizes.

"We think more information is better, and the way the site has been done, it makes it easier to compare courses and universities," she said.

The government is considering introducing a version of a US generic skills test as a measure of learning outcomes, which may also eventually appear on the site. Experts say such a test is culturally inappropriate, measuring student aptitude more than learning.

Student-staff ratios at public universities range from a low of 16:1 at the University of NSW to a high of 47:1 at Central Queensland University. However, CQU's rating is inflated because the government's data does not count contract staff. CQU said after adjusting for this, its ratio fell into line with sector averages.

"Student-staff ratios are an extremely broad indicator of staffing resources that tells us almost nothing about what the classroom experience is going to be like," Grattan Institute higher education policy analyst Andrew Norton said.

Attrition rates are also misleading since many "dropouts" are students who switch universities or courses within the same university, rather than fail or leave the system.

"These subtleties are likely to be lost in the publicity that will be generated in Australia and possibly overseas," Ms Thomson said.

Information on student surveys covering teaching quality, generic skills and overall satisfaction are available on the site for each of the 45 subject areas listed, and employment outcomes are listed by overall institution.

The site will eventually replace the Study Assist website and will be competition to the Good Universities Guide, which publishes much of the information but aggregates it as star ratings.

"My University will allow students to make a decision with full knowledge of courses, services and other student experiences," Senator Evans said. "The transparency that My University provides will help drive universities to lift performance and quality."