The Complex Trajectories project is a European Erasmus research project, involving eight organisations from four different countries. The consortium members are:
Complex trajectories and a new concept of success
One of the aims of the project is to understand the academic progression of university students once they enter university, beyond the programme initially chosen. What it does is, it extends the monitoring of students' trajectories to include the university system level. It tracks the student who changes programmes within the same branch of study or between different branches, who changes university, who alternates studies, who takes a break, who moves from classroom study to distance learning, etc. The ultimate goal is to understand the existing types of complex trajectories in order to encourage universities to help the students who follow them to complete them successfully.
The project also seeks to broaden the concept of success. The idea is to consider the completion of not only the specific study programme started by a student at university but also any university study programme the student has completed by the end of their academic career a success. From a systemic point of view, it makes sense that even a complex trajectory involving two or more programmes and/or universities can be a pathway to success – in other words, the student, after his or her time at university, ends up with a degree.
Methodology and dissemination
In order to achieve this objective, in the case of Catalonia, data from the UNEIX database was used. UNEIX is a collaborative project involving the twelve Catalan universities, AQU Catalunya and the Ministry of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which contains over 40 years of information on university student enrolment.
Based on these data, a set of progress indicators has been designed to enable regular monitoring of students' trajectories, whether complex or linear. These progress indicators report on the choices students make throughout their studies and the trajectory they build, where the main focus of analysis is the student, not the programme or the institution.
The analysis of students' trajectories at Catalan university system level is already a reality and it is scheduled to go public this year on the website of the Ministry of Research and Universities.
Universities can access their results through the UNEIX platform; access is currently private and requires a username and password. The objective for 2024 is to publish this information on the website of the Ministry of Research and Universities, in the section Research and Universities in figures (in Catalan), so that any agent of the university system or the general public can consult it.
Main results for the Catalan university system
Three aspects stand out from the analysis of the data obtained:
- 16.3% of students who enter university will end up changing programmes
This figure considers only four-year study programmes, which is the most common length of study, in brick-and-mortar universities. This 16.3% is the average value for the cohorts analysed, which are those from 2010 to 2016. The rate of change of study programme of the cohort has been calculated up to five years after the student's entry into university (known as t1, where t is the theoretical duration of the study programme).
- Students who change programmes take longer to graduate
Data are shown for the 2015 cohort in four-year study programmes at brick-and-mortar universities. Of the 32,821 students who entered the Catalan university system for the first time, 5,638 changed their study programme between their first academic year and the 2019-2020 academic year (t1) and 27,183 did not.
Of those who changed programmes, only 27% had graduated in t1. A total of 23.5% had dropped out and 49.5% were still enrolled at university.
Of those who did not change study programmes, 69% had graduated after five years. In this case, 18% had dropped out and only 13% percent were still enrolled at university.
- 54% of students who change study programmes also change universities
Continuing with the data of the 2015 cohort in four-year study programmes at brick-and-mortar universities of initial enrolment, the distribution of the 5,638 students who changed study programme is as follows:
These results reaffirm our commitment to complement the monitoring of student trajectories at degree programme level with monitoring at system level, in order to better understand how they function.
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