The march of
metrics in education continues to propagate unnecessary confusion, justifiable
anger and unwarranted pride. When too much importance is placed on such crude
measurements of ‘quality’, there can be little doubt that genuine educational
quality suffers. In recent weeks, the National Student Survey (UK) has published
its latest set of data on student perceptions of courses in UK universities. It
is astonishing to see how much value is afforded to this rather unsophisticated tool.
Thankfully there are few teaching academics who place much value on it and it
is increasingly seen as little more than another system to be ‘gamed’. More’s
the pity!
