Correlation between students' satisfaction with studies and graduation

Abstract

Student satisfaction in studies is one of the most interesting types of information for universities in student questionnaires. The attributes that some students are more satisfied in their studies than others are always crucial to know in order to develop organization´s performance. These reasons have been under scrutiny in Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS) before. TUAS has studied the attributes earlier as well as the correlation between the staff satisfaction and the student satisfaction. Sometimes the reasons of different satisfaction levels can be explained in an easier way than others and sometimes the reasons are more critical to the organization’s future than others. We have already shown in our last article that student satisfaction is correlating with personnel´s felt justice as well as we have demonstrated in past research that there are different variables that are affecting student satisfaction. The reason why student satisfaction is interesting is that it has been thought to be one of the positive attributes when scrutinizing graduation rates. One of the main reasons why universities of applied sciences exist is to graduate new professionals to society. Therefore, there is tremendous interest to find different variables that are affecting the graduation of students. This research is conducted by utilizing two different questionnaire tools: Student barometer and AVOP questionnaire as well as statistics of graduation levels. Student barometer is a questionnaire for higher education students in Finland. Its objectives are to provide data and information for researchers, research institutes, education developers and decision makers in the institutes. Student barometer handles a variety of different matters from student life by asking students´ opinions from quality of studies to their civil life activities and their expectations of the future. AVOP feedback questionnaire asks graduating students to evaluate and provide feedback on their education. The findings are used locally by institutions to improve their institutional processes and practices and nationally to inform performance-based monitoring and funding. All graduating degree students from universities of applied sciences are requested to fill out the questionnaire. Used data consisted of TUAS´ students data from earlier mentioned sources. Data was analyzed by Excel and SPSS. Samples were taken from the data mass and were composed to a statistical model with an excel spreadsheet. Students were grouped under the schools and degrees and arithmetic averages and standard deviations were calculated to each proposition. After calculating the arithmetic averages, further analysis was done with SPSS statistical analysis program. In SPSS, the propositions’ correlations were analyzed by one-tailed Pearson correlation. The overall research question is: Is there a correlation between student satisfaction and graduation levels? If so, how can these correlations be interpreted and what conclusions can be made? Future research aspects and practical recommendations will also be issued in the paper.