Bond University offers the best educational experience of any comprehensive university in Australia according to a federal government annual survey of students.
The Gold Coast university took the honours in the Student Experience Survey, released in the QILT national report this week.
Bond undergraduate students rated their 2021 university experience the nation’s best in three of six categories: student support (91 percent positive), learning resources (93.5 percent positive) and learner engagement (83.1 percent positive; national average 47.9 percent).
The university was second in Australia and best in Queensland in the remaining three categories: skills development (90.6 percent positive), teaching quality (90.1 percent positive) and quality of entire educational experience (86.6 percent positive).
Students Pooja Jaiswal, Lachlan Creese and Alex Kirchner all spoke of a common thread in their Bond student experience - it's personal.
"If I was to sum it up, it's very personal, its friendly and it's serene,” said Bachelor of Health Sciences student Ms Jaiswal.
“I love the environment here and that's something a student really needs along with great academic advisors - a serene study space and environment.
"I boast to my family and friends (about Bond) all the time! I'm the only member of my family to come and study overseas and I cherish that, but I also see it as a responsibility to do well."
Lachlan Creese, who is studying a Bachelor of Property, said he thought Bond was 'incomparable' to other institutions.
"Being a student at Bond is pretty surreal. You walk around campus and every academic knows you, every student knows you,” Mr Creese said.
“If they don't know you personally, they know who you are - it's such a first-name-basis sort of place.
“It's just incomparable and you don't really understand how profoundly supported you are until you are in the classroom."
Bond University Vice Chancellor, Professor Tim Brailsford, said the results reflected the single-mindedness of the university’s ‘students first’ philosophy.
“The best-in-class learner engagement result follows Bond’s commitment to on-campus teaching as soon as we could throughout the pandemic,” Professor Brailsford said.
“We strongly believe that face-to-face learning is the best education, where students are taught in real time exploring contemporary topics.
“This is clearly borne out in Bond’s extraordinary positive student rating across so many important categories.”
Read the full Student Experience Survey here.