We have recently published our strategy for 2022-25, and are now reviewing our key performance measures to make sure they are appropriate for this new strategy.
Key performance measure 19
Students who believe university provides good value for money
32.9%
of current undergraduate students think university offers good value for money, considering the costs and benefits.
Percentage of current undergraduate students who think university is good value for money
What does this show?
KPM 19 measures whether current undergraduate students think attending university is good value for money.
Between February and May 2021, the Office for Students asked 614 students 'Considering the costs and benefits of university, do you think it offers good value for money?' 32.9 per cent answered 'Yes'.
This has fallen from 37.5 per cent reported in the previous year. With a confidence level of 95 per cent, this change is not statistically significant. This means that there is at least a one-in-twenty chance that the change occurred due to random variation.
Further information
- Frequency: Annual
- Population: Undergraduate students who are domiciled in the UK and who answered the value for money question. Measures for other subgroups are given as background information below
- The measure: Respondents in the population who answered 'yes', given as a percentage of the respondents in the population who answered the question.
- Data sources: Polling by Natives carried out between February and March 2021
- Available: KPM 19 will be updated in spring/summer 2022.
Natives surveyed only a subset of current undergraduate students. There is a possibility that the views of this subset differ from the views of students more generally, simply because of random variation.
There is also a chance that the method of data collection (which is a form of volunteer sampling) introduces bias.
As a result, this measure is best used to understand in very general terms students’ perception of value for money and to note large changes in this perception between years. It is not suited to detecting smaller changes, or to drawing more precise conclusions.
During the polling fieldwork for this measure, coronavirus restrictions were in place in the UK. This meant that for most UK higher education students, teaching was carried out online.
The Advance HE and Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES) also examines value for money. In 2021, SAES found that 27 per cent of undergraduate students reported higher education to be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ value for money, a 12 per cent fall on the previous year.
Background information
Percentage of respondents who think university is good value for money
Further information about how UK-domiciled applicants, current undergraduate and postgraduate students and graduates responded to the value for question money is provided below.
| Year | Student type | Total population | Yes (%) | No (%) | I don't know (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Applicant | 673 | 43.8 | 26.4 | 29.7 |
| 2020 | Graduate | 372 | 39.5 | 53.2 | 7.3 |
| 2020 | Current postgraduate students | 393 | 45.3 | 44.3 | 10.4 |
| 2020 | Current undergraduate students | 656 | 37.5 | 48.2 | 14.3 |
| 2021 | Applicant | 585 | 43.8 | 35.2 | 21 |
| 2021 | Graduate | 288 | 36.1 | 52.8 | 11.1 |
| 2021 | Current postgraduate students | 317 | 41.6 | 48.9 | 9.5 |
| 2021 | Current undergraduate students | 614 | 32.9 | 54.1 | 13 |
Feedback
If you have any queries about the statistics published as KPM 19, please contact Will Hanson at [email protected].
If you have any queries about our overall approach or on individual measures, please contact Josh Fleming at [email protected].
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