Students' Dropout regarding Academic Employability Skills and Satisfaction Against

With the Lisbon and Bologna processes, studies completion and sustainable employability of students became priorities for European universities. For the Council of European Union, the share of 30-40 year olds with tertiary educational attainment should be at least 40% by 2020. The young Luxembourg University needs to understand why some students choose to leave without a diploma. Our aim was to analyse the relationships between self-perceiving of the academic employability skills (AES), self-related global quality of life (GQoL) and satisfaction towards against university services (SUS) among persisting and non-persisting students. Design: All freshmen (947) from the three Faculties of Luxembourg University (Sciences & Technology, Law & Finances and Social Sciences) were invited to participate to a cross-sectional survey that took place at beginning of the second semester. Methods: The persisting
<br />students were requested to complete an online questionnaire and those who had dropped out during the first semester (non-registered for the second semester) were contacted to responding at the same questions including socio-demographics characteristics: age; sex; nationality (yes/no); work (yes/no); father’s and mother's occupational level and education. A discriminant analysis was undertaken using: the AES scale-6 items (Cronbach’s alpha 0.81); the level of GQoL (1 item, values from 1 “very bad” to 5 “very good”) and the SUS scale-3 items (Cronbach’s alpha 0.74). Findings: 99 persisting students and 68 dropouts have responding. There's no significant age difference between these 2 groups (mean 21.12 years old). Dropouts are more likely young men (55.9% vs. 39.4% persisting, p = 0.036) and have a job (58.2% vs. 3.6% persisting, p = 0.000). Their GQoL is higher (83.3/100 vs. 78.1/100 persisting, p = 0.032), but their AES are lower (55.2/100 vs. 67.3/100 persisting, p°= 0.000). Among them, AES and SUS are positively correlated (correlation 0.414; p = 0.000). Conclusions: Contrary to what described in literature, dropouts are not older than persisting students. They’ve a poorer perception of their employability skills, they're less satisfied with university services (like reputation of university, of faculty and teaching quality). However, they've a better quality of life and much of them have a gainful work. These findings are in line
<br />with recent studies suggesting that perceptions of quality of higher education have an impact on students’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Further researches will determine nature of links between academic services, employability skills and dropout.