Beyond university dropout. An approach to university transfer

ABSTRACT

Degree transfer is understood as the increasingly common phenomenon among students of changing university degrees or university, especially after the first or second years of the degree. The profile of students who transfer (3,861students, 8.3% of students) is constructed based on microdata from the University Pre-enrolment Register of Catalonia and an explanatory model is validated by means of Multivariate Logistic Regression.

Transfer refers to both changing the area of knowledge or the university and occurs most frequently in engineering, experimental sciences and social sciences degrees. The profile of the student who transfers is male, does not balance paid employment with studying, has completed baccalaureate in a private or a state-funded private school, and is upper middle class with both parents with a higher-level education working in higher management positions or liberal occupations. His level of use of social networks and digital communication tools is very high.

KEYWORDS:

• University dropout
• first-cycle university students
• access to education
• choosing a degree
• university transfer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 According to the Integrated University Information System (SIIU), the dropout rate is defined as the percentual relationship between the students in a new intake cohort C enrolled on a degree T in the academic year x who have not enrolled on that degree in academic years x+1 and x+2, and the total number of students in the new intake cohort C that enrolled on the degree in the academic year X. This expresses the degree of non-continuity of students on the educational programme (RD1393/2007).

2 University Admissions Office. Inter-University Council of Catalonia.

3 The database contains individual information on the sociodemographic and academic variables, and the university pre-enrolment process (a total of 107 variables) of the university students admitted to Catalan public universities.

4 The highest educational and occupational level of the parents was used.

5 The admission mark (minimum 5 and maximum 14) for bachelor’s degrees incorporates the two best marks in the specific examinations phase, weighted by the corresponding coefficient (0.1 or 0.2). These subjects must be linked to the area of knowledge to which the degree they want to study belongs.

6 The logistic coefficients are expressed in terms of the odds ratio of an event occurring (change of degree due to transfer), defined as the odds ratio of an event occurring or not occurring. To this effect, odds ratios higher than 1 increase the probability of transfer, while odds ratios lower than 1 lower the probability.