Students in Germany rated their curriculum, teaching and job prospects more highly when their universities were labelled ¡°excellent¡± by the government ¨C even though the award was unrelated to teaching, according to new research.

The results cast further doubt on the reliability of student satisfaction scores, a co-author of the study said.

Germany¡¯s Excellence Initiative, a multibillion euro scheme that since 2005 has encouraged universities to compete to be designated ¡°excellent¡± on the basis of research clusters, graduate schools and their institutional plans, has injected an element of highly publicised hierarchy into a traditionally equal system.

The country has therefore become a testing ground for what happens to student choice and perception when UK or US-style inequality of prestige emerges.

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Mira Fischer, an economics researcher at the University of Cologne, found that in the three years after a university was named ¡°excellent¡± it was able to attract applicants with better grades. Students also rated it more highly across a range of measures, from the quality of teaching to their job chances after graduation.

But students were using ¡°hindsight¡±, she said, as satisfaction scores jumped very shortly after excellence status was bestowed, meaning that universities could not yet have benefited from extra money ¨C which was concentrated on research, anyway.

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After hearing their institutions were ¡°excellent¡±, students believed that ¡°my university must have been better than I thought¡±, she said.

¡°It is unclear that anything changed¡± for students as a result of the award, she added. ¡°If anything, resources were diverted away from teaching because of the excellence initiative,¡± Dr Fischer said,?because academic staff were pulled into helping bid for the money.

The use of satisfaction ratings to rank universities ¨C for example, in the UK¡¯s teaching excellence framework ¨C has proved controversial. Dr Fischer said the results from Germany cast further doubts over their usefulness.

¡°Students respond to these labels that are based on research,¡± rather than teaching, she pointed out. ¡°A more general question is whether students actually understand these labels.¡±

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Student satisfaction is ¡°not a meaningless indicator. It measures something,¡± she acknowledged. But students will ¡°implicitly incorporate¡± labels?such as ranking position, or a badge of ¡°excellence¡±, into their feedback, she pointed out. ¡°This could lead to bias with universities that are highly ranked,¡± which could ¡°reinforce the high standing of the university¡±.

However, after three years, the boost of excellence status had largely worn off, the research finds. Only when asked about the practical usefulness of their course did students still rate ¡°excellent¡±?universities better. Students at these universities, did, however, seem to report more emotional stress from fear and depression and ¡°seem to worry more about their financial situation", the study, published as part of Dr Fischer¡¯s doctoral thesis, found.

david.matthews@timeshighereducation.com