Satisfaction with higher education of Spanish graduates in the pre-Bologna era: a mirror of employment conditions?

In 2010, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was launched in many countries of the European Union. A major part of this initiative concerns the development of common policies for the quality assessment of higher education institutions, a process that is widely regarded as of utmost importance, and in which students have significant involvement. While student satisfaction is considered an important predictor of overall quality, proper analysis of student feedback is difficult as it includes both academic and non-academic factors, as well as personal expectations. On the other hand, graduates have a more holistic perspective from which they can assess their degrees, and there are fewer confounding factors that have to be accounted for in their feedback. This study analyses a dataset obtained from Spanish nationwide surveys to graduates with the objective of exploring their satisfaction with university in the light of their employment status. Statistical analyses, in which job relatedness appears as the most important predictor of satisfaction with higher education, are discussed with an emphasis on the socio-economic status of Spain in the period the surveys were performed (1998–2002). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]