MUSEQ-R

The 2026 MUSEQ-R will be opened from Monday 14 September until Sunday 1 November, 2025. All research Masters and PhD students receive an invitation via their student email to complete the survey. 

There are around 1500 research students across Macquarie, with a wide range of experiences. Don't leave feedback for your area and circumstances up to other students!  We look forward to seeing what you have to say for 2026. 

If you have questions about the survey, please write to gr.experience@mq.edu.au

You said…

Overall satisfaction with the graduate research experience remains strong in 2025, with results showing high satisfaction across key domains such as goals and expectations, supervision, skills development, and infrastructure. Differences by cohort continue, with domestic and part-time students reporting lower satisfaction than international and full-time students. The 2025 survey response rate increased slightly to 27% (from 25% in 2024), with further promotion planned for 2026.

Highlights from Macquarie-wide and Faculty responses across major categories:

• Overall experience: Overall satisfaction is 80% in 2025, with ongoing work to reduce the satisfaction gap for domestic and part-time students through cohort-building and improved onboarding.
• Supervision: Satisfaction remains high at 89%, supported by supervisor training, workshops and the supervision toolkit. Several supervision measures remain notably strong (for example, supervisor availability is consistently high in Faculty results).
• Skills development: Satisfaction remains high at 89%, with leadership skills the lowest-rated area (72%), indicating a clear opportunity for targeted development.
• Intellectual climate: Satisfaction has increased to 75%, though it remains moderate. Engagement in seminars and research community activities continues to be a challenge in some areas.
• Infrastructure: Satisfaction has increased to 81%, likely supported by improvements to graduate research web resources and navigation, as well as better access to timely information and events.
• Industry engagement: Satisfaction remains comparatively lower and an area for improvement, with discipline differences evident across Faculties. In Arts, industry engagement continues to rise but remains low (51%).
• Library: Overall satisfaction with library services remains high at 83.2% (slightly down from 2024). Students highlighted strong collection access, librarian advice, and accessible support; improvements in 2025 included a new sensory study space and additional monitors.

Our action plans for 2026

In response to 2025 feedback, the Graduate Research Academy (GRA) and Faculties will focus on targeted initiatives to lift satisfaction in the lower-rated domains and improve equity of experience across student cohorts.

• Overall satisfaction and cohort experience: Continue bridging the satisfaction gap for domestic and part-time candidates through stronger cohort-building. New students will have four entry points and an orientation program to support navigation of the graduate research journey and better manage expectations. Survey promotion will be strengthened to further improve response rates in 2026.
• Supervision: Maintain high performance through continued supervisor development, including training and workshops. In 2026, eight new Supervision Fellows will work with the GRA to build a Community of Practice to strengthen engagement and supervision quality.
• Skill development: Address leadership as the key improvement area by embedding more leadership training within the Graduate Researcher Development Program (GRDP), and continue faculty collaboration to meet discipline-specific skills needs.
• Intellectual climate: Lift engagement (not just offerings) by strengthening communication via the new Graduate Research Hub and implementing the upcoming Engagement and Experience strategy to improve participation in seminars, events and research community activity.
• Infrastructure: Continue improving navigation and access to graduate research information through the redeveloped website and the Graduate Research Hub, supporting timely updates and event visibility.
• Industry engagement: Deliver an Engagement and Experience strategy that strengthens industry engagement and professional skills training, including greater involvement of graduate research alumni to build connections and opportunities.
• Graduate Research Academy: Maintain steady performance in administrative processes and training offerings, while continuing to improve the website experience (noting website satisfaction has increased to 70%).

Faculty-level actions in response to 2025 results

Faculty of Arts

• Strengthen skills support in communication and time management through discipline-relevant publication and presentation support, and encourage uptake of GRA workshops.
• Support the intellectual environment through enhanced research culture in the new schools/departments.

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences

• Increase social and intellectual connection by involving graduate researchers in organising faculty/school/department events and regular social/research catch-ups.
• Consider panel-based assessment of student progress to complement and strengthen the APR.
• Provide discipline-tailored workshops on supervision best practice to strengthen aspects of supervision quality.

Faculty of Science and Engineering

• Streamline faculty-level administrative processes for graduate researchers.
• Review the level of annual research funding.
• Improve computing infrastructure, particularly access to CPU/GPU clusters.

Macquarie Business School

• Increase industry engagement and employment pathways beyond academia through initiatives such as industry recruitment events and stronger employer networking.
• Enhance intellectual environment by building a more vibrant research community via engaging seminars, peer networking, and cohort activities.
• Embed structured leadership development (for example mentoring, teaching experience, or conference organising roles) to lift leadership skills and confidence.

In 2024, the response rate for the survey was again around a quarter of the research student cohort.  This is an area for improvement in survey communication in 2025.

Overall, 83% of respondents to the survey were satisfied with their overall experience of research at Macquarie. This was steady with 2023 and 2024 results - having risen from 74.5% in 2021. At Faculty level experiences vary, with 89.5% of MQBS respondents satisfied, while in FMHHS respondents recorded a dip to 74.8%. This is partly explained by student profile. International students consistently respond with higher satisfaction rates than domestic students, a pattern found globally amongst research students.

Highlights of Macquarie-wide and Faculty responses for the six major categories:

• Supervision: Macquarie research students are very satisfied with their supervisors. For 2022-2024, satisfaction has held steady at about 90% or just below.  FSE and MQBS respondents both reported a 92% rate of satisfaction.
• Skills development: A highlight for 2024.  From just below 85% in 2021, skill development has steadily increased over the following three years to an MQ-wide average of 92% for respondents. Most of the 8 focus areas for skill development show steady improvement over the last four years, with notable increases in satisfaction for communication and time management. When filtered for part-time students, satisfaction is closing the gap to full-time students.
• Intellectual climate: Always a challenging area that reports lower than other domains for all Australian universities. At Macquarie, satisfaction has increased steadily if modestly over the last four years, with an overall average of 71.8% respondents satisfied. Department seminars, social opportunity, and student background all factor in this area. Intriguingly, domestic part-time students reported higher satisfaction than domestic full-time students for 2024.
• Infrastructure: This domain includes workspace, equipment and technical support, computing, and financing. Computing and finance were highlights for MQBS, while students reported less satisfaction with workspaces. In contrast, FMHHS students are very satisfied with their workspaces. On average, there is a small increase to satisfaction overall across Macquarie with a score of 78.9%.
• Industry engagement: This area is relative to Faculty and discipline, and so satisfaction rates look different. Overall satisfaction is steady with 2023 results at 57.6%, but Faculty results are a better indicator: In MQBS and FSE satisfaction increased, to 76.7% and 69.4% respectively. Arts and FMHHS registered slightly lower rates than 2023.