What are students actually saying about COVID-19 (NSS 2018–2025)?

COVID-19 remains a distinctly negative topic in NSS comments. The tone is consistently more critical among younger and full-time students and varies by subject, with some disciplines closer to neutral.

Scope: UK NSS open-text comments tagged to the COVID-19 topic across academic years 2018–2025.
Volume: 12,355 comments in this category (from 385,317 total); 100.0% with sentiment.
Overall mood: 28.7% Positive, 68.6% Negative, 2.7% Neutral (sentiment index −24.0).

What are students saying in this category?

The overall tone is negative (index −24.0), with more than two-thirds of sentences classed as negative.
Younger students drive most of the volume (69.4% of comments) and are more negative than mature students (−27.3 vs −16.8).
Full-time students are more negative than part-time (−25.4 vs −19.9). Disabled students are slightly more negative than non-disabled (−25.8 vs −24.0).
Tone varies by subject. Medicine and dentistry is near neutral (−0.4), while media/journalism (−36.3) and mathematical sciences (−34.2) are among the most negative. Subjects allied to medicine are better than average at −15.9.

Segment snapshot (single-year aggregate)

Dimension	Group	Comments	Pos %	Neg %	Sentiment idx
Age	Young	8,574	26.8	70.8	−27.3
Age	Mature	3,356	33.0	63.7	−16.8
Mode	Full-time	9,869	28.0	69.5	−25.4
Mode	Part-time	2,036	30.7	66.0	−19.9
Sex	Female	7,234	29.9	67.4	−22.6
Sex	Male	4,677	26.5	70.9	−27.0
Disability	Disabled	2,361	27.4	69.9	−25.8
Disability	Not disabled	9,567	28.8	68.5	−24.0
Mode	Apprenticeship (small base)	16	62.5	37.5	9.6

Subject mix within this topic (examples)

CAH group	Comments	Share %	Sentiment idx
Subjects allied to medicine (CAH02)	1,539	12.5	−15.9
Social sciences (CAH15)	1,095	8.9	−24.6
Business and management (CAH17)	760	6.2	−28.7
Psychology (CAH04)	755	6.1	−24.5
Design/creative/performing arts (CAH25)	667	5.4	−26.7
Biological and sport sciences (CAH03)	615	5.0	−22.3
Medicine and dentistry (CAH01)	285	2.3	−0.4
Media, journalism and communications (CAH24)	138	1.1	−36.3

What this means in practice

Prioritise disruption-ready delivery

Keep a simple, pre-agreed playbook for rapid shifts in teaching, assessment and access to resources.
Maintain a single, up-to-date source of truth for changes; summarise what changed and why.

Target support where sentiment is lowest

Younger and full-time cohorts are most negative. Use timely micro-briefings, Q&A sessions and flexible access routes to reduce uncertainty.
Ensure disability-related adjustments are explicit when arrangements change.

Lift practice from stronger-performing areas

Capture what medicine/dentistry and subjects allied to medicine did to keep tone closer to neutral (e.g., continuity of learning and assessment clarity) and adapt it for other disciplines.
Small but positive apprenticeship feedback suggests value in structured work-integrated rhythms—test which elements scale.

Make subject-level pain points visible

For the most negative subjects (e.g., media/journalism, mathematical sciences), run short, time-bound reviews of assessment clarity, workload pacing and access to specialist activities, then publish specific fixes.

How Student Voice Analytics helps you

Track topic volume and sentiment over time, then drill down from institution to school/department, cohort and site.
Compare like-for-like across CAH groups and demographics (age, domicile, mode, commuter status), and segment by campus or provider.
Generate concise, anonymised summaries and export tables/figures for rapid briefing to programme and quality teams.

Data at a glance (2018–2025)

Volume: 12,355 COVID-19 comments; 100.0% sentiment coverage.
Overall mood: 28.7% Positive, 68.6% Negative, 2.7% Neutral (index −24.0).
Cohort contrasts: young −27.3 vs mature −16.8; full-time −25.4 vs part-time −19.9; female −22.6 vs male −27.0; disabled −25.8.
Subject variation: medicine and dentistry −0.4; subjects allied to medicine −15.9; media/journalism −36.3.