Psychological quality of life and employability skills among newly registered first-year students:

In accord with new European university reforms initiated by the Bologna Process, our objective was to evaluate influences on the relationship between psychological quality of life (QoL) and the acquisition of academic employability skills (AES) among first-year students at the Univer- sity in Luxembourg. At the beginning (2 months in) and the end (9 months) of the academic year, 973 newly registered students participated in this study involving two cross-university sur- veys. Students who redoubled or who had stud- ied at other universities were excluded. Data were collected with an online questionnaire com- prising the psychological Whoqol-bref subscale, AES scale, and questions about other related factors. The AES score decreased from 74.2 to 65.6. At both time points, the psychological Whoqol-bref was positively correlated with en-vironmental and social relations QoL and per- ceived general health. Multiple regression mod-els including interaction terms showed that a higher psychological QoL was associated with better general health (difference satisfied-dis- satisfied 9.44), AES (slope 0.099), social rela- tionships QoL (0.321), and environmental QoL (0.298). No interaction with time effects was sig- nificant, which indicates that the effects remain stable with time. If the university could maintain the QoL indicators at appropriate levels or man- age decreases as they occur, it would have im- plications for health promotion and the crea- tion of new student support systems. The SQA- LES project provides valuable information for universities aiming to develop a European High- er Educational Area.