Throw me a life line

As a student, with so much info out there how do you decide upon the best university options?

To make things a little easier, each year the Guardian publishes a UK university and course league table, based on the feedback from first degree students participating in the National Student Survey (NSS). ?

The details below are an analysis of a few categories within the NSS. The primary aim here is to illustrate how this data can be analysed and visualised within a dashboard.

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DATA AND TOOLS

The data used below is downloadable from the Guardian website. I have also added segments of the same data to Kaggle.

So as to analyse and visualise this data I have used Tableau Public a free downloadable version of Tableau.

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STUDENTS WANT TO KNOW

1.????Which universities hold the top and bottom Teaching Score?

2.????Does the student class size affect a university’s rank?

3.????Link between rank, investment in student facilities and class size?

4.????How strong are the prospects for graduating students?

SUMMARY

·??????University of St. Andrews ranks No. 1 scoring a maximum 100 points

·??????University of Bedford ranks bottom scoring only 35 points

·??????The average class size of the top 50 Uni’s is 14.6 students

·??????The average class size of the bottom 50 Uni’s is 19 students

·??????Rank is linked to the investment in student facilities and class size

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DEEPER DIVE

1.???UNIVERSITIES HOLDING THE TOP AND BOTTOM TEACHING SCORES

Teaching score is derived from a combined score of 100, compiled from 9 different categories, ranging from the sizes of classes to how much universities spend on teaching per student, from the likelihood of students continuing with their course beyond year 1 to student prospects upon graduation. The university scoring 100 points or as close as comes top.

From the table below University of St. Andrews came top scoring the maximum 100 points.

Whereas the University of Bedford came bottom scoring only 35 points.

2.???CLASS SIZE AND UNIVERSITY RANK

The smaller the class size the better the university ranking. Average class ration for the top 50 universities is 14.6 students per member of staff. For the bottom 50 universities the average class ration is 19 students per member of staff.

As the ratio increases the rank lowers in the league table. The poorer performing universities?have a gradual larger class sizes.

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3.???LINK BETWEEN RANK AND THE SPEND ON STUDENT FACILITIES

This is a very simple and effect visualisation of how the variation of funds spent on student equipment based on rank. Red indicates less spend. On average the top ranking universities tend to spend more, as to how much more is not ascertainable from the data presented.

Diving deeper we see that there is a link between class size, rank and the student spend. On average the top uni’s not only spend more per student but also have smaller class sizes, whereas the opposite is true for the bottom ranking uni’s where they spend less and have larger class sizes.

4.???FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR STUDENTS

Students want a return on their investment of time and money. So what prospective opportunities do they have upon graduating?

The Guardian survey measured the success of graduates in finding a job or securing a place to undertake post graduate studies. The cut off point being 15 months after graduation.

The top half offer better prospects.

Although the prospects for graduates of lower ranked university are also strong, on average 70% success upon graduating within 15 months.

DASHBOARD

This is a compilation of all the worksheets above, combined for ease of visibility and interpretation.

CONCLUSION

Students and parents are now required to pay ￡9,250 per year in tuition fees alone. For a 3 year course this amounts to ￡27,750, with interest and additional expenses to be added.

Whilst the prospects for students remain strong, the quality of teaching and class size do vary. The more prestigious the uni the better the student survey score awarded to the uni.

In the future it would be interesting to see how this data develops year on year to include data on the whether students came from a low or middle income family, as well as whether students had additional commitments towards family and part time work, as these factors do influence their time commitments.

If I was to review this data a gain I would look to dive deeper into the Ucas points required per university and ranking.