Interruptions and failure in higher education: Evidence from ISEG-UTL

Abstract

Failure in higher education (HE) is the outcome of multiple time-dependent determinants. Interruptions in students' individual school trajectories are one of them, and that is why research on this topic has been attracting much attention these days. From an individual point of view, it is expected that interruptions in school trajectory, whatever the reason, influence success in undergraduate programmes, and this success is measured either by time required to obtain a degree, by the scores obtained in some more 'critical' subjects in these programmes, or by the number of enrolment registrations. The study of the impact of interruptions on failure in HE is also important to help education institutions fight this problem, and to support policy measures related to the articulation between upper secondary and HE programmes. In previous research the authors have shed some light on the determinants of failure in the first year of HE studies. In this article, the authors' major concern is to find some evidence of the effect of interruptions on HE failure among students using a life-cycle approach. They are interested to know whether such effects are related to gender and/or specific graduation programme. They also want to investigate whether work experience may counterbalance the effect of interruption on academic success. They hope to be able to derive some useful recommendations to address policy making in the fields of pedagogic methodologies in HE, articulation between academic and occupational learning in the framework of the Bologna Process, and public funding/fellowship policies in HE.