The 2013 Student Academic Experience Survey, produced by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Which? Magazine, raises questions over university standards and whether students are being pushed hard enough.
Some students, the survey finds, are studying for forty hours or more each week, while others are only working for half that time.On average, student workload totals thirty hours a week, which is 25% less than the time specified by official university guidelines.
This year's survey also reveals that since 2006 contact hours - the time available for students to interact with teaching staff, either on a one-to-one basis or in a group - have only risen to 14 hours averaged across all universities.
This is an increase of just twenty minutes in seven years - and in the same interval, tuition fees at English universities have risen a staggering nine-fold.
Three in ten first-year students in England, the survey finds, say they don't feel the course they've chosen offers value for money.Nearly six out of ten students said their course had been worse than expected "in some respects", while three out of ten said that if they'd known more about the academic experience they might have chosen a different course.
Two students out of ten stated that the information they got from universities was "vague", and one out of ten said the information they'd received was "misleading".
Richard Lloyd, Which? Executive Director, says: "With an increasingly competitive higher education sector, and soaring tuition fees, it has never been more important for prospective students to get as much information as possible to help them make the right choice.
"There must be an investigation into the huge variations in the academic experience that we have revealed, and more transparency to ensure students can get the information they need."
HEPI Director Bahram Bekhradnia says: "Universities are under increasing pressure to deliver - and be seen to deliver - value for money now that students are paying substantially higher fees. However, it is important to remember that, although students pay more and might expect to receive more for their money, for the most part universities are no better off as increased student fees are balanced by a reduced government grant.
"Our surveys consistently show the large variation between those universities that require the most and the least workload in any one subject and raises again the question about the comparability of standards between these institutions. It is unlikely that students, studying for on average less than half the time studied by other students on the same subject, will achieve the same outcomes."
