Abstract:

The number of university-educated professionals is one of the indicators of success rate and economic growth potential. This is especially true, given the ongoing digitization and the European Union's goals concerning the number of IT professionals in the national economy by the year 2030. Studies cost a lot of money, and so the completion rate also indicates the cost-effectiveness of public investments in education. The willingness to complete studies also depends on the situation on the labor market and the starting salary/wage.

The following research questions show the trend in studies completion indicators:
- RQ1: Is there a difference between the completion rate in bachelor’s studies and master's studies?
- RQ2: Does the completion rate in bachelor's and master's studies increase over time?
- RQ3: What is the trend in the length of studies of failed students?

For our research, we used the student database of the Prague University of Economics and Business, which has been kept since 2010. The data are updated in our data warehouse once a year, always at the beginning of November. In our research, we worked with the last data update from November 2021. Of course, the students of the master’s study program enrolled in 2020 and 2021 and the students of the bachelor’s study program enrolled in 2019-2021 have not yet completed their studies. Nevertheless, they are included in our research as still studying and, if they successfully complete their studies, they will increase the completion rate and decrease the time-to-degree. All data in our data warehouse are anonymized as required by EU Regulation no. 2016/679 – General Data Protection Regulation. We evaluated the data, using standard MS Excel functions and the SPSS software package, and we programmed some reports in the "R" programming language.

Our research provided the following answers to our research questions:
RQ1: After having analyzed the data records, we reached the conclusion that the completion rate in master's studies is significantly higher – between 70% and 90% in individual years of studies, while the completion rate in bachelor's programs is only between 33% and 44%.
RQ2: The identified trend in the completion rate during the analyzed years is contradictory. The trend in master's studies is slightly decreasing: y = -0.0143x + 0.8613, with the estimate confidence level – R² = 0.5597. On the other hand, the trend in bachelor's studies is very slightly increasing: y = 0.0086x + 0.3393, with the estimate confidence level – R² = 0.4844.
RQ3: The length of studies of failed master's degree students shows a steadily declining trend during the analyzed years, with the exception of the year 2014.

It ranges from 4.5 semesters to 2.5 semesters. The trend line is: y = -0.089x + 4.2468, with the estimate confidence level – R² = 0.2129. Bachelor's studies show a rather opposite trend. The identified values are very much aligned and there is no point in using the trend line – the estimate confidence level is only 0.058. The measured values range from 2.75 semesters to 3.22 semesters.

Keywords:

Completion rate, information technologies, study.