The National Student Survey (NSS) has been running annually since 2005. It is a survey of mostly final year undergraduates, with the main purpose to help inform the choices of prospective higher education students about where and what to study. Participating institutions and student unions can also make use of the data to improve the student learning experience. The survey is conducted across all publicly funded higher education institutions in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and some institutions in Scotland.
The trends and findings from 2006 to 2009 have been published by HEFCE. The 2010 results are also available and the results can be found on the Unistats web site.
Results in the annual NSS are seen as important because of their possible impact on student recruitment. However, its methodology is subject to substantial critical debate, and the results of a large number of institutions are so similar that using NSS results as a league table of academic quality can be misleading.