IS A NATURAL DROP-OUT RATE POSSIBLE? WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIPS DO YOU ESTABLISH WITH PREMATURE, EARLY AND LATE DROP-OUT?

Resumen

It stands to reason that in the process of choosing an academic career, students have imperfect and asymmetric information and that their decisions often involve a "wrong" choice. Events that can lead to initial frustration and subsequent academic dropout.The specialised literature shows that there is a high number of students who do not choose the right academic career for their aptitudes, skills and competences, hence the high dropout rates in the first year of the degree in which they have enrolled. In particular, Spain has high dropout rates, as the BBVA Foundation's 2019 study found (33% do not complete their degree, 21% drop out of university and 12% change their studies). In a natural rate scenario, students eligible to enter the university system with the prevailing cut-off mark could find a place in one of the degrees on offer.In this context, a certain type of frictional enrolment may appear as both degrees and students are heterogeneous and there may be a certain mismatch between students' preferences and the number of places offered in the degrees. There will therefore be a period of transition or adjustment in students' career choices where they will either try out new degrees or enter directly into the labour market. This mismatch may be related to lack of information, limited abstraction and operational skills, financial cost, time allocated to study, location of the university, attitude and a multitude of other factors. Correcting this mismatch requires time and effort to find a match between the student's preferences and the degree that fits their interests and aspirations. This practice is, in fact, beneficial for the economy, as it results in a better allocation of resources. The aim of this research is to explore the possibility of determining a natural dropout rate, to study the multidimensional nature of its relationship with premature, early and late dropout and to discuss ways of measuring it.