Using targeted benchmarks to inform international student satisfaction strategies at University of Leeds 

With one of the largest volumes of students in the UK, around an impressive 38,000 students including international students from over 150 countries, the University of Leeds has a sizeable job year on year in maintaining students’ satisfaction levels. We spoke to Rebecca O’Hare, Assistant Director (Residence Life & Accommodation Office) at the University of Leeds to find out how participating in the International Student Barometer every two years has provided much-needed insights that allow staff to create working strategies that significantly improve students’ positive feedback scores on their accommodation, living standards, and more. 

Exceeding competitor benchmarks in the student barometer 

Capturing the student voice when working with a larger student body is of real importance to the University, particularly when analysing their performance against local Russel Group Universities. After participating two years ago, University of Leeds returned to the International Student Barometer (ISB) to analyse improvements on their previous scores and those from the ISB’s 2023 global benchmarks. Rebecca noted that, when asked why they returned to the study: 

“It is because of the breadth and depth of students that we have come to live with us. We guarantee accommodation to international students who pay international rates of tuition fees and so we have high demand from this particular cohort.  

We get consistently positive feedback via the ISB about how important it is to be able to access great accommodation, how important it is to live in particular halls of residence, and the students themselves give us really good and detailed feedback about their halls experience. In addition, positive word-of-mouth from them aids in informing the next cohort of international students interested in living with us.” 

The ISB data supplied assists with analysing students’ preferences and is able to supply data for different ranges of student demographics, providing detailed analysis into the requirements of students from cultures across the globe that study within the university. What it also provides are tailored benchmark groups suited to each university’s areas of interest; in the University of Leeds’ case that was examining how they perform against Russell Group universities. 

The University of Leeds significantly outperformed other UK universities in multiple areas, including Rebecca’s focus area of accommodation. Students’ feedback proved overwhelmingly positive, with all 8 surveyed areas in accommodation returning a higher percentage than the Russell Group universities benchmark. Day-to-day life, too, proved to outperform not just the benchmark group, but UK universities as a whole – with overall living scoring 93% against 88%.  

Using ISB data to drive positive strategic change 

Of particular interest to Rebecca’s student accommodation team is the continued support for reviewing students’ living conditions and staff training on campus that has led to their impressive performance in accommodation services’ feedback from their student body. Rebecca noted that as part of their strategy based on their ISB data, student feedback, and the need for continued growth: 

“We're constantly reinvesting into our buildings to make sure that they're contemporary, that they're what students want, are beautiful spaces to live in, and that they're welcoming - as well as into the development of student facing staff who work there. With regards value for money, we have what we would describe as a strong ladder of rents and affordability is always front and centre in our minds. Our approach is to make accommodation affordable so that as many students as possible can come to university.” 

Rebecca and her team are committed to examining areas of potential growth that are shared across the wider university from analysis of their data and the benchmarks created by the ISB. Their student orientation program was of key interest alongside international students’ arrival experience, leading to the development of new strategies involving training development opportunities for staff. 

“We work very closely with the International Office to ensure the information we are sharing with students is consistent and that their arrival experience is smooth. We have undertaken extensive work to review pre-arrival communications and made significant improvements to our online pre-arrival induction module ensuring that information is accessible, easy to navigate and understand and helps to ease any concerns any student may have."  

The efforts of the team are noticed through their ISB feedback with student’s consistently recognising staff members’ labour – with 91% positive feedback vs 86% in the UK benchmark for their accommodation and living orientation experience, and a 93% positive feedback rating for their accommodation office, against a benchmark of 88%. 

Improving services for a diverse student body 

With such a large volume of students and a significant number being international, there are many cultural differences that cannot be overlooked when providing student support services in any university. The ISB is crucial for the University of Leeds to be able to analyse the depth of cultural differences within the university and to collect the data required to formulate the right strategies for significantly improving the international student experience. Rebecca notes that based on students’ complaints in particular: 

“Having such a diverse cohort, Residential Services in recent years has made significant investment in the area of Residence Life, which essentially oversees the holistic student accommodation experience. We have expanded our full-time team, developed and implemented a range of bespoke training for both our Residence Life warden and student team and worked hard to raise awareness of the support available to international students in each property. Ensuring that our Residence Life teams possess strong cultural competency skills will always remain a priority for us.” 

The work that the University of Leeds has committed to shows in their results: 10 out of 17 areas surveyed in the student support category outperformed UK benchmarks.  

Using data to inform wider student support strategies 

Mental health awareness has been an increasingly necessary area for universities to focus on, particularly in the post-covid lockdown era, with students looking to mental health services for support. Areas of the ISB survey have increasingly placed a focus on this for both the University and its students to paint a significantly clearer picture of students’ perceptions of mental health and their support. 

At the University of Leeds, Rebecca noted that a particular challenge for the university has been not only providing adequate living conditions for their increasingly diverse student population, but also in using their student data to identify cultural differences and areas of concern raised, including mental health and co-habitation. 

“The joy of working somewhere like the University of Leeds is that you are surrounded by individuals - both staff and students - from all over the world. On the surface this is incredibly exciting and one of the top benefits of living with us. However, for many it can present many complex challenges. Mixed communication signals, language barriers and cultural norms can often present themselves as problems to others and so it’s our role to not only help students navigate this, but also provide a fun and memorable way to learn about different cultures that they can leave the University of Leeds more culturally enriched. As an example, our popular Residence Life website which we launched in 2022 provides a hub of information for students new to Leeds and who are trying to navigate the city and campus in a multitude of ways as well as providing tips and advice to international students on things like how to overcome flatmate conflict or set up a bank account."

With a 95% positive wellbeing rating against 92% in the Russell Group benchmark, there are certainly signs that the work Rebecca and the team at University of Leeds is working effectively. Asking for mental health support is also ranked more highly at University of Leeds than the Russell Group universities, pointing to the strategies being made with students’ feedback at the forefront providing significant positive gains. 

Year-on-year growth and improvement 

One of the key advantages of taking part in the ISB across multiple years is that the data supplied can be used to benchmark future performance and assess whether new strategies are working, and inform new ones. For Rebecca’s team, they specifically aim to continue to improve their working strategies: 

“We are constantly reviewing how we can improve our residence life programs. As outlined above, we’ve delivered a lot of training and upskilling and made strides in this particular space.  Each year, program delivery looks different from the previous, this ensures that it’s contemporary, in line with popular culture trends and our team works hard to ensure students are aware of what is occurring when so that they can participate, but also importantly, feel a sense of community and connection. It's really, really important. It was nice to see in the most recent survey that there has certainly been an impact, that there's some improvement there or recognition of that work. Long term, I would like to be utilizing the data from the ISB to advocate that we should be doing more work in this space to continue to improve those scores.” 

The University of Leeds has seen a positive increase in their students’ feedback from their last survey that can be attributed to their determination to improve their services based on crucial feedback from both the ISB and their own surveys, with a year-on-year increase in satisfaction in 14 out of 18 categories for student support. Arrivals, too, showed a fantastic level of improvement over the last two years – with 20 out of 22 arrival measures ranking better in 2023 than 2021. 

Alongside additional improvements in other areas including 25 out of 30 measures of learning satisfaction improving year on year, it is clear from the data that the University of Leeds’ strategies based on their benchmark groups and areas of interest are working. Rebecca’s team, and those in the wider university, are satisfying students’ needs based on their ISB feedback and are reaping the positive feedback.