M Mazzoleni

Departures from the formal of actual students' university careers: an application of non-homogeneous fuzzy Markov chains

As in most higher education (HE) systems, the Italian university organisation draws paths of credit progression in formal curricula, which aim at framing the acquisition of knowledge and competencies within each specific major. The resulting yearly syllabi therefore develop in a sequence of examinations that are to be successfully passed, and formal administrative registration allows access to the following academic year. In general, there is a divergence between formal and actual career progression because each university student can proceed at her/his own pace, sketching her/his own trajectories, free to depart from the formal progression. Even if applied to various HE settings, Markov chain models do not fit the aforementioned situation. A methodological extension has been introduced, whereby progression levels are considered as fuzzy states. Markov chains with fuzzy states identify the latter with specified academic years and express each students situation as a relational link to present and past academic attainments. This link is operationalised by means of a membership function, which is here discussed with reference to the Italian HE system.

The Analysis of student paths at the University using the Multivariate Joint Models

ABSTRACT The joint models analyse jointly survival and longitudinal data and they are composed of two sub-models, the longitudinal and the survival sub-model. It is interesting to analyse the situation in which one or both the sub-models are multivariate. First, it is possible to extend the longitudinal sub-model considering more than one longitudinal covariate. Second, the survival sub-model can be extended considering different competing events. The application proposed analyses the undergraduates’ paths in an Italian University, analysing the influence of one or more longitudinal covariates on the events graduation and dropout (a withdrawal from the University system before the graduation).