Abstract:

One of the main themes in social psychology (regarding also educational system) is social thinking study or causal attributing. Fritz Heider was the first that showed the relationship existing between common sense and environment events. He shows that other people behavioural causes are generated by internal factors (such motivation) or external factors (such social pressure). Jones and Davis developed Heider model and insists on internal causes. Bernard Wiener showed also that persons success or failure (there own or others) can be described in two dimensions: a) internal (personal) – external (situation) and b) stable-unstable. In this case Wiener found four main possible causes:
i) stable and internal (capacity);
ii) unstable and internal (effort);
iii) stable and external (task difficulty);
iv) Unstable and external (chance).
Scholar failure causes were classified in: social factors, scholar factors and biophysical factors.
Social factors like group implication or family situation may change scholar’s attitude regarding education and school.
Main difficulties on student’s attitude are:
A. Somatic difficulties;
B. Cognitive/intellectual difficulties;
C. Instrumental difficulties on learning problems;
D. Affective difficulties;
E. Pedagogical weakness of teachers and parents.
The main objectives of this paper are to identify the main causes of student’s difficulties and also to analyze the effects of student’s failure on affective life, social life and labour market. There are significant differences in students’ failure between tertiary education and secondary education. For instance, higher education is not compulsory, and therefore each student must choose between continuing studies and entering the labour market.
Starting from this point, we attempt to find the main causes of student failure in Academy of Economic Studies. Due to its long activity - almost a century, this university is considered a remarkable representative of superior economic studies in Romania. This institution had in academic year 2007-2008 10 faculties, over 49.000 students and course attendants; 35500 - graduation cycle, 9400 - master programmes, 2500 - PhD enrolled, over 1600 in academic schools and post-graduation courses and 2000 didactic staff and technical and administrative personnel.
Studying the last three generations of students in our university, we have found that economic causes are the principal causes of student failure and therefore the economic transition to market economy has consequences in this respect.
Economic causes are followed in importance by scholar’s causes and biophysical causes. The failure rate is greater in the first study year (around 20%) and decreases starting with the second study year (around 15%) and reaches 10% in the third study year. Since the effects of student failure are painful both for students and for higher institutions, we finally propose some methods to decrease the failure rate and to improve education quality in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies.

Keywords:

tertiary education, student s failure, education quality.