Diversity is a rising concern for world’s students – Report

Students around the world are more confident about career prospects but are increasingly concerned about a range of other issues, including student diversity and their quality of life, according to the latest Global Student Satisfaction (GSS) Report 2025.

Surprisingly, students studying in the United States had the highest level of satisfaction, 4.32 out of five, in this year’s report, the same level as in the 2023 report.

This is despite three years of turmoil on America’s campuses – including pro-Palestinian encampments, police actions, and President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented students, the closing of diversity, equity and inclusion offices, and federal and state governments dictating what can be taught.

Students in Lithuania reported the lowest level of satisfaction, 4.07 – a 3.8% decline from the country’s 2023 score.

Hungary declined the most by 4.6% from its 2023 score of 4.38 to 4.18 in the current report. Across the globe, ‘Student Diversity’ registered the steepest decline, -5.03%, falling from 4.37 in 2023 to 4.15 in the current report, which is below the pre-pandemic level of 4.17.

The GSS found that on the whole satisfaction fell in five of the six other categories queried. The two areas where satisfaction increases are ‘Career Development’, which rose by 1.29% to 3.91 and ‘Online Classroom Experience’, which continued a trend started in 2023, when the GSS reported a 7.22% increase to 3.86 in 2023; this year’s report shows another 1.9% rise to 3.91.

Satisfaction with ‘Admission Process’ fell by 3.85%, ‘Quality of Student Life’ by 4.39%, and ‘Student-Teacher Interaction’ by 2.07% to 4.24, 4.14, and 4.25, respectively. ‘Overall Satisfaction’ fell 0.71% to 4.18, stalling the 3.69% increase (to 4.21) registered between 2021 and 2023.

According to Edwin van Rest, CEO and co-founder of Netherlands-based Studyportals, the world’s largest university information portal, which conducted the GSS survey with the British Council IELTS and Uni Life: “These results show where universities are winning student trust and where they risk losing it. Students are more confident about career prospects but increasingly concerned about diversity and their quality of life.”

The GSS was conducted among current students between January 2023 and July 2025 or alumni who graduated after January 2022. More than 100,000 students or alumni in 3,059 universities in 124 countries were surveyed.

Online learning

Despite the fact that today’s students are “digital natives” and in many cases took online courses in secondary school, with some notable exceptions, which push up the global average, students in every region of the world are dissatisfied with online courses.

Among the ‘Big Four’ English-speaking destinations – the US, UK, Australia and Canada – students in the UK and US reported greater rates of satisfaction, 3.98 and 4.42, respectively, higher than the world average of 3.91; America’s rating was the highest of all countries. Canadian and Australian students rated online learning almost the same, 3.84 and 3.85, respectively.

Students in Southern Europe were even less satisfied with online learning, with an average score of 3.72. With a score of 3.97, Swedish students rated online learning above the international average.

In Western Europe, German students gave online learning a satisfaction rating of 3.86, while Belgian students gave it a rating of 4.17. By contrast, students in France, Belgium and Austria rated their satisfaction with online learning to be between 3.64 and 3.70. With the exception of Polish students, who rated it 3.77, Eastern European students were the most satisfied, awarding online learning ratings of between 3.93 and 4.0.

Students in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Sub-Saharan Africa gave online learning scores ranging from 3.68 to 3.79, this last being .22 lower than the international average. Pakistani students gave online learning its lowest rating, 3.58, while students just across the border in India gave it the same rating Belgians did, 4.7.

All students in Southeast Asia rated online learning above the international average, with some giving it a rating of 4.6.

“The US can be considered to be a powerhouse of online education, because it not only offers the largest number of programmes globally but also benefits from decades of investment in digital infrastructure and a culture of educational innovation,” Studyportals’ Karl Baldacchino, a researcher on the analytics and consulting team, told University World News in an email.

“This combination makes US online offers both academically appealing and technologically feasible on a massive scale.”

Further, he said that online learning in Western Europe is still an emerging opportunity. “Many institutions are only now experimenting with new programme designs, testing delivery models, and refining their promotional strategies, partly as a result of the COVID pandemic.

“That means that this region of Europe currently lags behind the established position seen by the US or also the UK for that matter but it should not be discounted; its capacity to grow in this area is significant.”

Student-teacher interaction

While overall respondents rated student-teacher interactions higher than they did their online experiences, the rating for this category fell 2.07% to 4.25 from the 2023 ranking.

Among the ‘Big Four’ English-speaking countries, once again American students rated student-teacher interactions the highest at 4.47 (second in this category only to Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore, where the aggregate rating was 4.9).

Australia and the UK were at 1/100 of a point higher than the national average of 4.25, while Canadian students rated their interactions with their professors at 4.15, almost 2.4% lower.

Again, Pakistani and Indian students’ judgements of teacher-student interactions were mirror images, with Indian students giving a rating of 4.38 and Pakistani students giving a rating of 3.57, almost .75 lower than the global average.

A partial explanation for Pakistani students’ rating, said Baldaccino, is that Pakistan’s education system “often emphasises formal, hierarchical relationships between students and faculty, with large class sizes and more traditional teaching methods that leave less room for the personalised interaction that students exposed to Western media might expect”.

The last part of Baldacchino’s answer addressed the impact of Western, chiefly American, television and internet shows, as well as films, on the expectations of today’s university students outside the US.

With the exception of those studying in Southern Europe, the ratings given by European students clustered around the global average (4.25), with Austrian students rating their interaction with professors at 4.34 and the aggregate for countries grouped as “Other Eastern Europe countries”, for example, Croatia, Georgia, Russia, Slovenia, Belarus, Armenia and Ukraine, being 4.46, almost exactly the same as that in the US.

No country in Southern Europe was anywhere near the global level of 4.25; the highest was Portugal at 4.21, followed by Spain, Italy and Greece, where the rating was 3.92, more than 8% below the global average, and lower than the average for the MENA countries, 4.23, and Sub-Saharan countries, 4.15.

The paradox of Türkiye

One of the more surprising findings of the GSS is Türkiye’s high rating, the highest in its region, in “Overall satisfaction”, 4.15, which is not far from the global average of 4.18.

However, Türkiye’s score of 3.9 in “Student life” is among the lowest of the 124 countries surveyed. This rating maps relatively well to Türkiye’s position in the middle of the bottom 10% of countries on the Academic Freedom Index (164th out of 179 countries), which, as discussed in these pages, is largely due to the increasing control of higher education by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, which includes the firing of thousands of professors.

“Türkiye is indeed a paradox in international higher education,” Baldaccino wrote in response to a question about Turkish students’ rather puzzling rating of their overall satisfaction. “Its Academic Freedom Index ranking has dropped significantly in recent years, now sitting in the bottom 10% globally.

“On the other hand, Türkiye has invested heavily in becoming a regional hub for international students. The Internationalisation of Higher Education Strategy (2018 to 2022) sets explicit targets to attract 350,000 international students by 2023, and that goal has almost been largely met when it hosted over 300,000 international students by 2022 to 2023.

“By late 2024, Erdoan announced that Türkiye had welcomed 340,000 students from 198 countries, contributing around US$3 billion annually to the national economy.”

He said to explain the contradiction, one could possibly assume that student satisfaction was shaped more by the lived, day-to-day campus experience than by macro-level governance indicators. For many students from the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia, Türkiye offers an affordable and accessible study destination, with tuition and living costs much lower than in Western Europe or North America, he said.

“So, it is plausible to see international students continue to rate their experiences positively because of the value for money, cultural proximity, and stability of campus life, even though the country faces systemic governance challenges,” said Baldaccino.

Concerns about diversity

Another surprising finding is the ratings given for ‘Diversity’ – both globally and in the United States.

Despite the fact that researchers were in the field for the first five months of the second presidency of Donald J Trump – months during which he signed a plethora of executive orders banning critical race theory, and diversity and equity programmes, and federal immigration agents arrested hundreds of international students from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America – the rating Americans gave for their satisfaction with diversity was the highest of the 124 counties surveyed: 4.34, almost 4.5% higher than the global average.

Students in the other ‘Big Four’ English-speaking countries, the UK, Canada and Australia, rated their satisfaction as 4.28, 4.21 and 4.19.

The average rating for satisfaction with diversity for the Asia Pacific region was even lower than the Big Four: 3.97. For Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the average rating was 4.16.

According to Baldaccino: “Student diversity has shown the steepest decline among all categories. This trend likely reflects immigration policies that restrict international students, reminding us that openness and inclusivity are not guaranteed and must be actively protected and nurtured.

“Students seek exposure to diverse perspectives and value initiatives that intentionally leverage different cultural viewpoints,” he told University World News via email.