NPS Benchmarks for Higher Education
Whenever we present survey results to university leadership or boards of trustees, inevitably one of the first questions we hear is…
How does this compare to other institutions?
It is natural to want a point of comparison - not just for competitive benchmarking but also for putting findings into context. We want to know if our institution is thriving, lagging, or falling somewhere in between.
Benchmarking in higher education can be challenging because institutions vary widely in mission, audiences, and priorities. Good results for one university may be a red flag for another.
There is, however, one standardized metric that I’ve found to be comparable across institutions: the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
For those unfamiliar, NPS is a simple but powerful metric that measures how likely people are to recommend a product, service, or—in this case—an institution to someone else. Response options are given on a 0-10 scale and the question generally looks like this:
Look familiar? Many companies use this question because they recognize how powerful referrals are in generating new customers.
Responses to the question are grouped into three categories:
Detractors (0-6): unlikely to recommend the institution
Passives (7-8): satisfied but not necessarily enthusiastic
Promoters (9-10): actively willing to recommend the institution
The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
Companies (or universities) use the Net Promoter Score to track over time how satisfied their stakeholders are with their services and how likely they are to promote them to others.
Naturally, universities want to compare their scores to others. While there are industry-wide NPS benchmarks for sectors like healthcare and retail, no widely accepted benchmark exists for higher education.
So we created one.
We reviewed results from the 60+ studies we conducted in the past two years to produce benchmarks for four higher education audiences:
These values reflect the mid-range - i.e., the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile. Therefore, one-quarter of institutions will see results below this range and one quarter above.
Students tend to be the toughest critics (gasp), while alumni are typically the most enthusiastic advocates. Faculty and staff responses are more nuanced - they are the most likely to say their recommendation 'depends' on a student’s interests and priorities. While fair, strong advocacy from employees is generally a good sign for institutional health.
Although results will vary between institutions for myriad reasons, I hope these ranges provide a helpful guidepost for evaluating your own results. Context is everything. Understanding how your institution’s NPS compares to others not only clarifies where you stand - it also helps identify opportunities to strengthen stakeholder satisfaction and advocacy.