Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The evaluation of the effectiveness of a study programme refers to its outcomes, and may be measured with the level of satisfaction of the programme objectives. In an educational programme, we can recognize three macro objectives referred to students:

The measurement of these components is based on the construction and analysis of several indicators from surveys on teaching assessment, or on placement, or on teachers and employers, and, too, on linkage between databases.

In this paper, we propose a fuzzy approach to measure the degree of satisfaction of graduates on the suitability of university education for working purposes. The indicators proposed come from two factors: the importance attributed to six aspects of university education and the quality of the service perceived by graduates. We use these indices to evaluate the first results of a telephone survey on a sample group of graduates at the University of Foggia. Using factor analysis, we show that all the aspects of university education can be summarised in just one dimension.

In this paper, we analyse some aspects of job satisfaction by means of a multilevel factor model, decomposing the factor structure into the graduate and degree programme components, using data from a survey on the 1998 graduates of the University of Florence. Due to the ordinal scale of the response variables, we adopt a multilevel factor model for ordinal variables. The results show that the factor structures at the graduate and study programme levels are not the same, although they are similar; the study programmes with extreme factor scores should be selected for a deeper investigation.

In a university, students represent the final users as well as the principal actors of the formative services. A measure of their perceived quality is essential for planning changes that would increase the level of the quality of these services. This perceived quality is analysed in this paper with the ECSI () methodology. The ECSI, which implements a structural equation model, is aimed to represent the satisfaction of the students with some latent variables gauged through a set of observable indicators. We extend the ECSI to the data obtained from graduates of the University of Florence employed one year after graduation.

The use of robust procedures in regression model estimation identifies outlier data that can inform on specific subpopulations. The aim of this study is to analyse the problem of first year dropouts at the University of Florence. A set of administrative data, collected at the moment of enrolment, combined with the information gathered through a specific survey of the students enrolled in the 2001–2002 academic year at the same athenaeum, was used for the purpose. In order to identify the most important variables affecting the students’ dropout, the data were first fitted with generalized linear models estimated with classical methods. The same models were then estimated with robust methods that allowed the detection of groups of outliers. These in turn were analysed to determine the personal or contextual characteristics. These results may be relevant for the implementation of academic policy changes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the strategies used by graduates of the University of Foggia to enter the labour market. Using both quantitative and qualitative variables, quantified by means of optimal scaling, a structural equation model has been created to analyse the relations between latent variables tied to university education, and graduates’ expectations and methods of job searching. Furthermore, we study if the correlation structure between these latent variables is constant observing separately female and male graduates.

In this paper, we analyse the skills used at work, 18 to 30 months from the completion of studies, by the students who graduated at the University of Florence in the year 2000. The aim is pursued by detecting the determinants of the phenomenon with particular attention to the possible differences between study programmes. We performed two analyses: in the first, we identified homogeneous groups of degree programmes and applied a proportional odds (logistic) model for each group and a partial proportional odds model for the whole university. The second analysis was an ordered logistic model with random intercept having two levels of aggregation with the degree types as second-level units.

In this paper, we discuss the salient information drawn from a Delphi experiment (Shang version) on some Italian job market issues realised by an email interview of a panel of experts. We define firstly the job quality dimensions of newly hired graduates and then compare it with the possible situation of graduates at the end of their careers. The dimensions are compared with a multivariate statistical analysis on the relationships between the satisfaction perceived by the Paduan graduates for their own job, and some personal and job characteristics. Such an evaluation may suggest new criteria for a future survey on “external effectiveness” of university education based on graduates’ reports. The dimensions of initial and end-of-career quality of graduates are correlated to the experts’ concepts through a semantic differential analysis.

In this paper, we apply a model for the analysis of job search effectiveness through the so-called “weak ties”, i.e. the personal links through which the attainment of a work position may be favoured. We analyse weak ties with reference to the first job research by the University of Padua graduates through family, friendship and university links. To obtain a work position more coherent with a graduate’s educational investment, we analyse, too, the information about job opportunities that colleagues communicate to employed graduates. By hypothesising that graduates use their personal links in different portions, we segment, by means of a multivariate method, the sample of graduates according to the faculty and, within faculty, according to the curricular and social characteristics of graduates.

The need to match academic education with the ‘know how’ required by the labour market may give birth to both co-operation between universities and enterprises, and to ‘flexible’ academic curricula. Students can choose from a wide range of University degrees, and within each program can choose the applicative field/major and opt for a short work experience, the internship. The feedback from the university-enterprises interaction may be observed in graduates’ job opportunities, since they constitute the third pole in a triad of changing relationship. The case of the Faculty of Statistical Sciences at the University of Milan — Bicocca, in the academic years from 1998/99 to 2002/2003, allows one to identify patterns in undergraduates’ educational strategies and poses questions as to the relationship between academic knowledge, individual expectations and actual experiences at work.