The rating comes from students' own reports on their time at university. The Good Universities Guide (GUG) only awards five stars to institutions in the top 20 per cent of a ranking.
UNE also earned five stars for teaching quality, from both undergraduate and postgraduate students. It earned five stars for undergraduate median starting salary and for undergraduate full-time employment. In the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) survey, UNE ranks first among NSW public universities for student experience.
UNE Vice-Chancellor Professor Chris Moran said the result reflects how UNE sees its students.
"Our learners are people first and students second," Professor Moran said. "They have jobs, families, caring responsibilities and communities. Study has to fit around all of that. Our job is to make it possible."
"We don't promise a UNE degree will be easy. A degree asks for a big commitment; that is part of its value. We do our utmost to make sure students aren't carrying that commitment alone."
Support built in
Professor Moran said consistent student approval over more than two decades is not an accident. UNE's support for students is part of its structure and outlook, set in place at the University's founding in 1954.
"UNE was established to give students what they need to succeed, wherever they are," he said. "We pioneered distance education because many people who wanted a degree could not move to a campus. That principle shaped how we teach, how we organise ourselves and how we support students. It has been evolving for more than 70 years."
"A lot has changed in 21 years. Government policy has shifted, technology has moved on, and students want to learn in different ways. Our approach has stayed the same: start with the student's real circumstances."
Professor Moran paid tribute to UNE's staff. "Our lecturers are the frontline of the student experience. Alongside them is a large workforce of people dedicated to making a degree accessible. These ratings are our students acknowledging the people who work here."
About the Good Universities Guide
The GUG is Australia's largest tertiary education comparison tool. It is published to help prospective students make decisions. It ranks universities across a range of categories using data from the Department of Education and graduate and student experience surveys.
