Why do higher graduates regret their field of studies? Some evidence from Catalonia, Spain

Abstract

The present paper focuses on transitions from school to work for recent higher education graduates in Catalonia, Spain. In particular, we concentrate on the relationship between mismatch and disappointment with the chosen university career. For that purpose, we employ cross‐sectional survey data provided by The Quality Assurance Agency for the University System in Catalonia, covering a sample of individuals who graduated in the 1997/98 academic year from one of the seven public Catalan universities. The results show that regretting the chosen field of education turns out to be associated with mismatch as well as other factors: personality, ageing, educational characteristics (such as final university grades or the specific field of study) and regretting the attended institution.

Keywords:

• over‐education
• regret
• higher education

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank The Quality Assurance Agency for the University System in Catalonia, and namely Anna Prades for supplying the data, Luis Vila for supplying REFLEX rates on regretting and Josep‐Lluís Carrión‐i‐Silvestre and Enrique López‐Bazo for helpful comments. Likewise, the author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology given under grant SEJ2006–01161/ECON.

Notes

1. The REFLEX project is financed as a Specific Targeted Research Project of the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme. Indeed, REFLEX represents ‘The Flexible Professional in the Knowledge Society New Demands on Higher Education in Europe’. Notwithstanding, closer figures can be obtained from Careers after Higher Education: a European Research Study, which is a European graduate survey.

2. Psychology literature defines inaction as either not taking an action or not having made any decision.

3. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy indicated that multivariate analysis obtains excellent results (the factor accounted for 95% of the overall variability). Subsequently, we re‐scaled the factor predictions to [0–1], since the individual opinions on the determinants of being contracted should not have a negative value, whilst one should represent being fully confident in themselves.