Abstract:

In the Business School of Vitoria-Gasteiz (University of the Basque Country), as in many other European universities, we have faced during this course the implementation of a new Grade: the Business Management and Administration Degree. In this sense, the next years will involve a delicate stage because of situations like the following: the coexistence of two different curricula and the subsequent adjustment of resources between them, the deployment of new teaching methodologies, the greater involvement of students in the learning process,...

Given the risk that the level of satisfaction of students and graduates would suffer in such a critical time, coupled with the conviction of the need to develop an Internal System of Quality Assurance for the new degree, the Business School of Vitoria-Gasteiz developed two years ago a procedure to test the level of satisfaction of the two groups referred, including the design of a questionnaire.

The first phase of data collection and analysis in 2008/2009 was a starting point which facilitated the identification of some areas for improvement. However, coinciding with the introduction of the new grade in our Centre in the 2010/2011 academic year, we have obtained new data with a dual goal: to know the level of satisfaction of the current students and the last class´ graduates; to identify if there are differences in the level of satisfaction between students already enrolled in the new degree and those who are still in the old studies as well as between the last class of graduates (2009) and the graduates studied in the previous phase (2003-2007).

While the results show that the level of satisfaction of the last class of graduates is not different from previous classes, the new grade students are significantly more satisfied than their peers of the old studies in issues as important as knowledge acquisition, skills and competences acquisition or the relationship between education and skills demanded by the labor market. Even this analysis has been done in a very early stage of the implementation of the degree (there are only students enrolled in first grade) results suggest that new teaching methodologies deployed in subjects of new studies are perceived as suitable to develop skills and competences by students.

Keywords:

Higher Education, Students’ satisfaction, university graduates´satisfaction, satisfaction measurement.