Burnout Among Students of Technical Faculties in Serbia – A Case Study

Abstract

Even though university students are not employees of the faculties, their academic duties (attending classes, taking exams, writing term papers and essays, and so on) can be considered as forms of work, whereby they engage socially with their teachers and other students, which is why student burnout has come into increased focus of numerous studies. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between gender, tuition fee status, and year of study and burnout among the students of basic academic studies at one of the public faculties in southern Serbia (N=194) using the School Burnout Inventory (SBI-U 9). The obtained results indicate that moderate exhaustion, cynicism, and the feeling of inadequacy are related to moderate burnout of the majority of the students. It has been determined that gender influences one burnout dimension – exhaustion, while the students’ tuition fee status is related to cynicism and inadequacy, as is their year of study. This study also found that high degree of burn-out increases with the years of study.