The National Student Survey should be replaced by a poll asking undergraduates how much they have engaged with their studies and university life, the head of a mission group has said.

Speaking at the sixth annual Enhancing the Student Experience conference in London, Alex Bols, executive director of the 1994 Group, which represents 12 research-intensive universities, said the NSS should be wound up when it comes up for review in 2015 - its 10th anniversary.

Mr Bols said the NSS, which surveyed about 287,000 final-year undergraduates this year, had played a major part in improving elements of the student experience since it was launched in 2005 but was no longer very useful.

¡°After 10 years the data [will] have shown relatively minor changes in the results year on year,¡± he told an audience on 22 November.

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¡°It might be time to consider something different to act as a new incentive to nudge students to consider other issues as important and to act as a driver for institutional change.¡±

He advocated the introduction of a poll similar to the US National Survey of Student Engagement, which asks students to assess how much they have engaged with their course and other opportunities at university.

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This poll goes ¡°beyond a simplistic survey of how ¡®satisfied¡¯ students have been¡± and ¡°assesses recognisable factors which¡­form an overall picture of how well the student has engaged in academic life¡±, he said.

Mr Bols also addressed the recent loss of the universities of Bath, Surrey and St Andrews from the 1994 Group. Their departures were, he said, an ¡°inevitable consequence of the thinking we¡¯ve been doing to determine where we stand in the new environment¡±.

In a reference to the four 1994 Group members - the universities of Exeter, Durham, York and Queen Mary, University of London - that left this year to join the Russell Group, he added: ¡°A rush to ¡­ join the right ¡®club¡¯ may have short-term attractions but it lacks the long-term benefits of groups of institutions coalescing around a shared vision of higher education.¡±

jack.grove@tsleducation.com.