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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Elite universities and the new teaching ratings

The Times

Sir, We do need to be concerned about the quality of teaching in our colleges and universities, but the results of the second round of the Teaching Excellence Framework add little to our understanding of the quality of teaching in our higher education institutions (“Elite universities exposed as second-rate”, June 22). Student satisfaction surveys are notoriously inaccurate as indications of the quality of teaching they have received — many studies show students prefer styles of teaching that significantly reduce how much they actually learn — and the TEF provides no data about whether students are in fact learning anything.

Moreover, good postgraduate employment statistics do not take into account whether students are actually using anything they have learnt during their studies, or whether they have