A quarterly publication of AQU Catalunya

94

July 2019

The findings of the Via Universitària Report 2017-2019 were made public at the University of Barcelona/UB's Edifici Històric on 15 May. Anna Prades, project manager at AQU Catalunya and chief technical officer of the project, made the presentation.

The aim of the Via Universitària programme is to provide information in order to profile the student body, study conditions and environments, and student satisfaction with university and teaching.

The Via Universitària survey covered a total of twenty universities in the Vives Network, and asked questions about the following seven groups of different issues:

1. Social composition and access and progression pathways
2. Time devoted to studies and leisure activities
3. Financial support and accommodation for students
4. Teaching and assessment methodologies
5. Institutional participation and activities offered by the university
6. Gender differences
7. The functioning of master's programmes

The findings of the study show that there is room for considerable improvement in the university system in Catalonia. With regard to each issue, the report found that:

1. Middle and upper classes are over-represented in higher education institutions, and that there is also social segregation in the subjects studied.
2. There is a high level of commitment to study among students, the level being higher than the theoretical value according to credit enrolment.
3. 84% of students stated the family as being their primary source of financial support. This was followed a long way behind by grants (40%), working and studying at the same time (36%) and work experience/placement (2%). The majority live with their parents (64%).
4. Teaching methodologies that are more active encourage students to be more committed to their studies.
5. Students participate very little in university cultural and institutional activities.
6. Degree subjects are segmented according to gender. Female students tend to specialise in healthcare whereas male students tend more to take subjects dealing with organisational and decision-making processes.
7. Master's programmes follow similar patterns to undergraduate degrees as regards equity and access according to social class. The level of student absenteeism was low.

AThe report also makes a series of proposals, a series of which appear in the following diagram:

The driving group for this project consists of the Vives Network of Universities, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education of Andorra, the La Caixa Foundation and AQU Catalunya, which is responsible for the technical supervision of the project.