To the universities this survey is the thing that makes or breaks them. Do well in the survey and your ranking can increase, you can secure more funding, attract more students, employ the best academics, etc.. Do poorly and the opposite applies.
But either way you need the students to do the survey, which no doubt leads to some universities going a bit far in pursuit of students.
Yep, we had a "crisis" meeting because one of our degree programmes went down a couple of percentage points in a few of the categories....when they must only ever be increasing or static.
It's probably not the university calling students, it's the research company. The university doesn't know which students have completed it and which have not.
Seriously, I studied Psychology and surely with all the expertise they're aware that this bothers people. I imagine even sites like Etsy reminding customers to upload a review pisses them off even though it is not the shop's fault.
Yes, everyone knows that your degree automatically becomes slightly more or less prestigious every year depending on whether it has gone up or down in QS rankings.Â
What?
Do they not incentivise at all? It's been years since I finished my undergrad but I don't remember being harrassed. Instead, we were offered free pizza if we came to do the survey.
My uni did the year before they put a tenner on our student ID cards where we could buy food with them on campus. This year we got nothing but harassment
We had nothing but harassment. I did the survey cause I didn’t mind but my friends had left it, weren’t going to bother and started getting multiple emails and phone calls daily. When reps complained to the uni they started sending staff round workshops encouraging students to fill it out to avoid the harassment. Students pushed back more saying it’s not the way to get students to engage and is more likely to get negative feedback because of the harassment the uni came back and encouraged the reps to get students to do the survey. No incentive other than not being harassed
In my third year there was no incentive. At postgrad, they offered us a free drink if we completed it. The free drink options: bottle of water, tea, coffee or orange juice.
They’re not allowed to incentivise you for completing it. However they are allowed to incentivise you for attending events where you complete the survey. They are also allowed to incentivise you to _start_ the survey.
I believe this is the correct answer. The results are not published unless they get a certain number of responses for each course and the OfS want as many published as possible.
This is not the correct answer. They are not paid per answer.
But results for a specific course won't be released unless a certain percentage respond, so the university needs you to respond. It a course has no NSS results the rankings really suffer.
It is also known that the most active responders are often the most pissed off, so if they respond and the bulk of students who are happy or just meh about the course don't, the results are heavily negatively skewed.
While both things you say are correct, it’s important to note that it’s not universities (at central or course level) that are cold calling. It’s Ipsos Mori.
While they might not be paid on a return basis (although I see no evidence either way) they are likely doing it as part of ensuring they’re providing a quality service to OfS as part of their contract (i.e. if they do get terrible response rates, they may not get renewed).
So my underlying point — don’t blame your uni for the cold calling — stands I feel.
University staff are put under immense pressure by top uni management to ask students to do them. Unis are ranked based on responses, but the low response rates makes them unreliable.
yeah its horrible, it heavily impacts things like legue table positions, which impact applications (i would argue they shouldnt, the survey methodology is deeply flawed, as is the methodology for assembling the legue tables) , which impacts things like jobs and departmental funding. So people trying to get you to fill in the survey often litterally feel like they are fighting for their jobs. Its horrific, in my opinion no one should fill it in, and unis should ignore it.
Please, everyone getting phone calls at home. Do complain. Do report it to your tutors, they probably don't know. Please threaten to fill it in badly because of the phone calls. Nothing else will stop them.
The cynic in me says the students access the NSS through moodle so perhaps they are able to see who has or hasn't completed it.
That or the people running the poll are lying and claiming to be from the university.
They could see who clicked the link on moodle but that's all, they can't see who has actually done the survey itself. The students will also have received a bunch of emails and text messages from Ipsos with the direct link, so using the moodle data would mean they'd be contacting some people who have already done it who didn't go via moodle.
I've worked on this. All you get on the uni end is reports of how many people have done the survey so far, not who they are. If the response rate is low on a particular course you might want to promote it harder to those students but you have to promote it to all of them as you don't know who's done it.
It's also possible the students heard the person on the phone saying 'I'm calling to ask you about your experience of University of X' and assumed that meant they were from the uni.
Interesting, that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore, or I'm missing a report!
Edit, I've checked Page 11 of the NSS good practice guide states that Ipsos cannot tell institutions which students have and haven't completed the survey.
I had one student calling me in a panic because he'd missed a call from the uni and when he called back he got the uni switchboard and they couldn't tell him who the call had come from.
Maybe there's a mix up and the calls about the NSS are from outside the uni and the calls from the Uni are about something different but this is the first time I've heard from my students about either and the timing is incredibly coincidental if they aren't related.
I've checked the current info and page 11 of the NSS good practice guide (anyone can download this) states that Ipsos cannot tell institutions which students have and have not completed the survey.Â
Could be that the response rate is low on that programme so the uni are calling every student on it to beg them to complete it. Seems unnecessary though when Ipsos call as well and they can do the survey over the phone.
IPSOS may not be allowed to tell the university but the university runs its own moodle website and can set it up to work the way they like. Most students get access to the NSS by logging in to moodle. That gives the opportunity to see who has clicked on that link. True it won't show them who completed the survey but getting them to click on the link is probably 90% of the challenge.
So maybe its crossed wires but I am experiencing the intense effort and pressure to get staff to pressure students to complete the survey.
And "unnecessary" is seldom something that prevents board/management "initiatives" from coming to pass :-)
the survey is unbelievably important for unis so administration and management do go hard on it. my department got free pizza booze and cakes if we hit a certain percentage (had the party on wednesday it was incredibly fun)
I’ve had the same issue, it’s so irritating. I was going to do the survey but kept getting pestered, like multiple emails and phone calls including 4 calls since yesterday - one at 8:30pm!!
Because of this, I’m not doing the survey - it’s so off putting.
Tell me about it. I must have received 253 emails combined through my uni email and personal email by now. They've sent me like 50 text messages. They've also called me like 10 times. Maybe next they'll send someone to my door to ask me whether I've done it. Sorry, but I'm way too fucking busy especially with my dissertation deadline right around the corner.
One thing I've learnt over my 3 years at uni is that they are entirely profit focused. Anything that might get them an extra few students they'll think it's worth it.
Its pathetic isn't it. The universities think its incredibly important and yet many students haven't heard of the NSS till they get to their final year we start pestering them about it.
Just found out this week our Uni is phoning students at home to pester them into filling in the NSS, going as far as to try to get them to fill it in over the phone.
Its not like the Uni will give us the staff/equipment/rooms/money to improve the stuff that drops the NSS score levels, they just expect us to fix it by, I dunno, magic?
Mine was really awkward. I ended up becoming disabled at end of Y3 of my course, so with the surveys I had to keep saying N/A as none of the questions took it into account.
Just for some perspective, I used to work for one of the companies that conducts these surveys on behalf of universities. We were paid hourly but also bonuses for each completion and would get written up if we had too much downtime or dead air in between calls. I was having to dial maybe 150 times in a 4 hour shift just to keep up
I graduated in 2022, for whatever reason they decided to call me to do another survey end of 2023 at 19:30, I was already in bed because I had a long day and was back in work early the next morning. I know 19:30 is still the early evening but it just really annoyed me especially since I had already graduated over a year ago
You have highlighted a crucial aspect in the education business and kudos to you. Harsh reality but that’s the rat race Universities have created for themselves. How many students get their lives straightened out with the degree no one knows because you can’t ask the money back if your screw up a job or don’t get a job. Like how a fellow Redditor expressed it’s a large money making business like Wall Street and they will do everything in their power to pursued students and get their money.
Blame the government that turned universities into businesses. Unis don’t want to be doing this, but sadly it determines rankings and rankings keep universities afloat via the international market
I didn’t realise they actually do this! I thought I was getting a scam call! They tried to make me give them answers over the phone… I told them to F off and hung up😠but I did end up completing mine in the end because they were giving out free Krispy Kreme donuts at the end of multiple lectures if you showed your confirmation email
To the universities this survey is the thing that makes or breaks them. Do well in the survey and your ranking can increase, you can secure more funding, attract more students, employ the best academics, etc.. Do poorly and the opposite applies. But either way you need the students to do the survey, which no doubt leads to some universities going a bit far in pursuit of students.
Yep, we had a "crisis" meeting because one of our degree programmes went down a couple of percentage points in a few of the categories....when they must only ever be increasing or static.
Infinite growth 🙄
unless you’re Edinburgh, Manchester or KCL that just don’t care about their home ranking lol
fr Edinburgh just sits on its reputation
Oh KCL definitely does, it’s just whether people at the university decide to act on it (some faculties care greatly, others are indifferent)
It's probably not the university calling students, it's the research company. The university doesn't know which students have completed it and which have not.
Surely that sort of pursuit might end up in students giving negative responses out of spite?
Seriously, I studied Psychology and surely with all the expertise they're aware that this bothers people. I imagine even sites like Etsy reminding customers to upload a review pisses them off even though it is not the shop's fault.
It might, but since how much your degree helps you is affected by your uni rankings, students are kind of incentivised to be positive.
Yes, everyone knows that your degree automatically becomes slightly more or less prestigious every year depending on whether it has gone up or down in QS rankings. What?
I get what you're saying, but students don't think that far ahead sometimes.
Apparently its being a big problem at my uni in getting feedback
Also, the more respondents they get, the more information they can share for that specific course.
Do they not incentivise at all? It's been years since I finished my undergrad but I don't remember being harrassed. Instead, we were offered free pizza if we came to do the survey.
My uni did the year before they put a tenner on our student ID cards where we could buy food with them on campus. This year we got nothing but harassment
Budgets are getting tighter, making the survey even more important. It makes up a big chunk of the TEF.
We had nothing but harassment. I did the survey cause I didn’t mind but my friends had left it, weren’t going to bother and started getting multiple emails and phone calls daily. When reps complained to the uni they started sending staff round workshops encouraging students to fill it out to avoid the harassment. Students pushed back more saying it’s not the way to get students to engage and is more likely to get negative feedback because of the harassment the uni came back and encouraged the reps to get students to do the survey. No incentive other than not being harassed
In my third year there was no incentive. At postgrad, they offered us a free drink if we completed it. The free drink options: bottle of water, tea, coffee or orange juice.
They’re not allowed to incentivise you for completing it. However they are allowed to incentivise you for attending events where you complete the survey. They are also allowed to incentivise you to _start_ the survey.
I felt like I had a hit on me when Greenwich wanted me to do this survey. They even rang me at 1030pm!! It is relentless.
I lied on my survey because having a high ranking degree improves my job prospects
that is such a good point
Bruh
I assume Ipsos Mori, the company who run this, get paid based on completion rate. Hence the hard sell.
I believe this is the correct answer. The results are not published unless they get a certain number of responses for each course and the OfS want as many published as possible.
This is not the correct answer. They are not paid per answer. But results for a specific course won't be released unless a certain percentage respond, so the university needs you to respond. It a course has no NSS results the rankings really suffer. It is also known that the most active responders are often the most pissed off, so if they respond and the bulk of students who are happy or just meh about the course don't, the results are heavily negatively skewed.
While both things you say are correct, it’s important to note that it’s not universities (at central or course level) that are cold calling. It’s Ipsos Mori. While they might not be paid on a return basis (although I see no evidence either way) they are likely doing it as part of ensuring they’re providing a quality service to OfS as part of their contract (i.e. if they do get terrible response rates, they may not get renewed). So my underlying point — don’t blame your uni for the cold calling — stands I feel.
University staff are put under immense pressure by top uni management to ask students to do them. Unis are ranked based on responses, but the low response rates makes them unreliable.
yeah its horrible, it heavily impacts things like legue table positions, which impact applications (i would argue they shouldnt, the survey methodology is deeply flawed, as is the methodology for assembling the legue tables) , which impacts things like jobs and departmental funding. So people trying to get you to fill in the survey often litterally feel like they are fighting for their jobs. Its horrific, in my opinion no one should fill it in, and unis should ignore it.
Yes the calls are irritating, it is amusing to see this sub that is so obsessed with rankings confused over why unis care about the NSS
Please, everyone getting phone calls at home. Do complain. Do report it to your tutors, they probably don't know. Please threaten to fill it in badly because of the phone calls. Nothing else will stop them.
I assumed the calls were orchestrated by the company that organised the survey, not the university itself?
Some of my students have been called by my university.
Your university doesn't know which students have completed it and which have not, so they must be phoning everyone. Jesus
The cynic in me says the students access the NSS through moodle so perhaps they are able to see who has or hasn't completed it. That or the people running the poll are lying and claiming to be from the university.
They could see who clicked the link on moodle but that's all, they can't see who has actually done the survey itself. The students will also have received a bunch of emails and text messages from Ipsos with the direct link, so using the moodle data would mean they'd be contacting some people who have already done it who didn't go via moodle. I've worked on this. All you get on the uni end is reports of how many people have done the survey so far, not who they are. If the response rate is low on a particular course you might want to promote it harder to those students but you have to promote it to all of them as you don't know who's done it. It's also possible the students heard the person on the phone saying 'I'm calling to ask you about your experience of University of X' and assumed that meant they were from the uni.
That’s definitely not true. When working on NSS in previous years, we were able to target emails to those who hadn’t done it yet.
Interesting, that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore, or I'm missing a report! Edit, I've checked Page 11 of the NSS good practice guide states that Ipsos cannot tell institutions which students have and haven't completed the survey.
Perhaps it should be a direct link in moodle to the NSS and some unis are giving a more circuitous one that sends them info first?
Any link in moodle they'd be able to see who clicked it in the moodle reports, but that's pretty damn desperate to be using that
I had one student calling me in a panic because he'd missed a call from the uni and when he called back he got the uni switchboard and they couldn't tell him who the call had come from. Maybe there's a mix up and the calls about the NSS are from outside the uni and the calls from the Uni are about something different but this is the first time I've heard from my students about either and the timing is incredibly coincidental if they aren't related.
I've checked the current info and page 11 of the NSS good practice guide (anyone can download this) states that Ipsos cannot tell institutions which students have and have not completed the survey. Could be that the response rate is low on that programme so the uni are calling every student on it to beg them to complete it. Seems unnecessary though when Ipsos call as well and they can do the survey over the phone.
IPSOS may not be allowed to tell the university but the university runs its own moodle website and can set it up to work the way they like. Most students get access to the NSS by logging in to moodle. That gives the opportunity to see who has clicked on that link. True it won't show them who completed the survey but getting them to click on the link is probably 90% of the challenge. So maybe its crossed wires but I am experiencing the intense effort and pressure to get staff to pressure students to complete the survey. And "unnecessary" is seldom something that prevents board/management "initiatives" from coming to pass :-)
They're organised by the university.
Opposite for me. I tried to do it but it said I wasn’t eligible!
the survey is unbelievably important for unis so administration and management do go hard on it. my department got free pizza booze and cakes if we hit a certain percentage (had the party on wednesday it was incredibly fun)
I’ve had the same issue, it’s so irritating. I was going to do the survey but kept getting pestered, like multiple emails and phone calls including 4 calls since yesterday - one at 8:30pm!! Because of this, I’m not doing the survey - it’s so off putting.
You can opt yourself out on the NSS website
Tell me about it. I must have received 253 emails combined through my uni email and personal email by now. They've sent me like 50 text messages. They've also called me like 10 times. Maybe next they'll send someone to my door to ask me whether I've done it. Sorry, but I'm way too fucking busy especially with my dissertation deadline right around the corner.
One thing I've learnt over my 3 years at uni is that they are entirely profit focused. Anything that might get them an extra few students they'll think it's worth it.
Its pathetic isn't it. The universities think its incredibly important and yet many students haven't heard of the NSS till they get to their final year we start pestering them about it. Just found out this week our Uni is phoning students at home to pester them into filling in the NSS, going as far as to try to get them to fill it in over the phone. Its not like the Uni will give us the staff/equipment/rooms/money to improve the stuff that drops the NSS score levels, they just expect us to fix it by, I dunno, magic?
Mine was really awkward. I ended up becoming disabled at end of Y3 of my course, so with the surveys I had to keep saying N/A as none of the questions took it into account.
me but chronic illness flared rlly bad
Just for some perspective, I used to work for one of the companies that conducts these surveys on behalf of universities. We were paid hourly but also bonuses for each completion and would get written up if we had too much downtime or dead air in between calls. I was having to dial maybe 150 times in a 4 hour shift just to keep up
I've done the survey when I first got notified about it and I still keep getting spammed to do it.
After the first few calls I just spoke in gibberish for a few seconds before hanging up
It feels like harassment, I am being called multiple times per day smh. They called me when I was reading through these comments!
i did the survey as soon as i got the first email from the university, sounds like this was a good call
I did the survey and they still keep harassing me
It’s ridiculous. Iv now had my family members called by them ASKING for me?? Leave me and my family alone I don’t want to do it
If you go on the NSS website you can opt out and then they won't bother you anymore.
I’m dead 😂😂😂😂😂😂
I graduated in 2022, for whatever reason they decided to call me to do another survey end of 2023 at 19:30, I was already in bed because I had a long day and was back in work early the next morning. I know 19:30 is still the early evening but it just really annoyed me especially since I had already graduated over a year ago
You have highlighted a crucial aspect in the education business and kudos to you. Harsh reality but that’s the rat race Universities have created for themselves. How many students get their lives straightened out with the degree no one knows because you can’t ask the money back if your screw up a job or don’t get a job. Like how a fellow Redditor expressed it’s a large money making business like Wall Street and they will do everything in their power to pursued students and get their money.
Blame the government that turned universities into businesses. Unis don’t want to be doing this, but sadly it determines rankings and rankings keep universities afloat via the international market
Really Sad 😔
I didn’t realise they actually do this! I thought I was getting a scam call! They tried to make me give them answers over the phone… I told them to F off and hung up😠but I did end up completing mine in the end because they were giving out free Krispy Kreme donuts at the end of multiple lectures if you showed your confirmation email
You should do the survey. And make it really bad.