Marketing professor Verhoef: Elsevier questionnaires show a rise in the quality of university teaching

In discussions about teaching quality, it is often stated that standards are falling. Prof. Peter Verhoef, holder of the chair in Marketing and director of the Customer Insights Center , has shown that at universities, student assessments actually reveal a positive trend for teaching quality. Together with Prof. Philip Hans Franses of Erasmus University Rotterdam, he has analysed all the student assessments that appear each year in Elsevier.

Elsevier student assessments play an important role in which university prospective students choose. Verhoef: ‘But what exactly is the judgement about a degree programme at a certain university based on? Does the content of the teaching really play an important role, or do students attach more value to the way that the modules are taught? Are we then dealing with the quality of the teaching or with good facilities, like computer rooms? And how important is it that the examinations are closely related to the content of the modules? We often hear that the level of education is declining, but is that what the students think, too?’

Verhoef and Franses studied the student evaluations, paying particular attention to the Economics and Business degree programmes due to the large numbers of students. ‘As far as the general level is concerned, we can state that the judgements of the students reveal a positive trend every year since 2000’, says Verhoef. ‘That’s good news.’ In addition, a statistical analysis has shown that the judgement about the content of the modules has the greatest influence on the final judgement. These are followed in joint second place by the quality of the lecturers, the available facilities and the design of the degree programme. Judgements about the organization and the examinations turn out to have a limited effect on the final judgement. With Economics and Business Studies, too, the quality of the content is the most important factor, but the researchers noticed that the design of the degree programme plays less of a role than in other degree programmes.

Verhoef and Franses conclude from their research that universities, when it comes to students, should primarily concentrate on content when looking for ways to improve the teaching. ‘In addition, we found no proof for the frequently heard statement that teaching is suffering from the emphasis on research’.

More information: Prof. Peter Verhoef