A response to the My University Website

The Federal Government’s My University website has recently re-launched with a number of changes.

Despite lobbying from the University to request changes and greater clarification in the display of information, the website still contains some incorrect or confusing information for potential Bond University students.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. Bond’s three semester per year structure is not considered in the calculations that My University makes on Bond’s data; and
2. The results are drawn from two separate sets of data, and there are inconsistencies in the reporting structure of these data.

As a result the My University site currently displayed tries to fit Bond’s data based on three full semesters per year into a public university model of two semesters per year. This is causing major errors in the information displayed.

The major issues for Bond University are:

• Student to Staff Ratio (SSR) is stated as “N/A” on My University because it uses Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research (DIISTRE) data based on two semesters to calculate SSR for all universities. This would result in our SSR being displayed as 15:1 which is incorrect. Our SSR is 10.5:1. The Government acknowledges that the calculation used is incorrect for Bond and has agreed to publish “N/A” rather than an incorrect SSR.
• Course lengths are overstated for some degrees, as the website calculates course duration on two semesters per year. For example, Bond’s Bachelor of Business displays as 3 years instead of 2, while the MBBS displays as 9.5 years instead of 4.6.
• Course fees are understated for some degrees, as the website calculates the fees as one semester’s fees x two semesters per year. Therefore Bond’s Bachelor of Business is incorrectly displayed as $30,928 per year, rather than $46,392.
• Course searches conducted using ATAR/OP cut-off scores will not return any results for Bond University because we do not publish cut-off scores.  Although the likelihood of students using this option has been reduced as this filter has been hidden via a drop-down option, use of this feature will omit many course options for prospective students.
• Some Bond University statistics (e.g. number of students) are incorrectly displayed because the data sets are incorrectly calculated/ interpreted, given our three semesters per year structure. 
• Many of the Bond University statistics shown as N/A (Not Available) are not published because DIISRTE does not calculate these statistics for Bond.
•  Staff Qualifications: Data on the qualifications of staff are not displayed. This is because Bond was not required and did not submit qualifications data in its staff data return to DEEWR for 2010. The University has now supplied the required data to DIISRTE for uploading, but this has not been presented on the My University website.

Many other universities have reported inaccuracies/ interpretation with the display for their data and the industry’s peak body University Australian have acknowledged the website has numerous errors and misinterpreted data. Bond University is working with Universities Australia and the My University website team in an effort to have these inaccuracies corrected.