'Rate your course' idea catches on for students

 I realised a student who had done the course would
have been able to tell me the ins and outs of it better
than a prospectus, says Georgie Smithwick

IRELAND: Most third-level students might be inclined to have a good grumble or even drop out if they discovered the college course they had enrolled in was not as described. Georgie Smithwick went one better, however, when she founded Coursehub.ie, a student-led review site.

Smithwick left the college where she was studying and transferred to take business and French at Trinity College Dublin. Her experience helped her to identify a gap in the market for a student-led course review site.

“I ended up switching courses and transferring to TCD. I realised a student who had done the course would have been able to tell me the ins and outs of it better than a prospectus, so went about setting up an online review site,” she says.

The site went live in August 2011 featuring the 12,000 course and college reviews, on the same day that 71,000 students in Ireland were awaiting the first round of offers from the Central Applications Office.

Less than three months later, course hub.iewon the Best Education Website at the Eircom Spider Awards and Best Student Website at the Irish web awards.

Current students and graduates can anonymously review their course and rank the accuracy and helpfulness of each other’s comments.

Prospective students can read reviews or ratings on any course they may be interested in, she explains.

The site leverages the experiences and inside knowledge of third-level students to provide course reviews that go beyond the gloss and bias of prospectuses, Smithwick says. It currently has more than 15,000 reviews.

A survey last year by the ESRI found that 15 per cent of new entrants into third- level courses in Ireland did not continue the course the following year and up to 80 per cent of final year secondary school students said they would like to have more information before making a decision about college and career choices.

Smithwick hopes to roll out the site to other countries, beginning with Australia next August.