How difficult is it to graduate from university in your country?

13 comments

1. Depends on your degree and also on the university. Some are “easier” than others, also depending a bit on personal ability and learning style of course. Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences (important distinction in Dutch) already restrict access before applying by only allowing in people who have a specific level of previous education. The entrance bar for (research) universities is higher than that for universities of applied sciences.

   Theoretically anyone who is admitted to a certain program should be able to finish it on a purely academic basis: they should be “smart” enough to do so and have the necessary required skills. Of course that doesn’t mean everyone actually finishes due to a plethora of reasons.

2. It used to be a lot tougher to graduate – even at the bachelor’s level, the work was very rigorous.

   These days they’ve made it a bit easier to pass your year. If you get 45 ECTS (credits) out of 60, you can move on to the next year and simply swap out an elective with whatever you failed.

   If you’re between 30-45 ECTS, then you’re stuck in the same year and you need to do all the courses you failed, and then you fill up space with classes from the next year – if there’s space.

   Anything below 30 ECTS isn’t accepted and you need to start over.

   Flemish universities might be a bit different, this is how it is in francophone universities, I believe.

3. In Poland where I studied Robotics, around 50% dropped out for various reasons during the first two years. But in reality most of them just decided that the amount of math/physics at the beginning is not for them. If you are really stubborn, its hard to get kicked, althought it may take you 7 years to graduate instead of 5.

4. I don’t know if it is “difficult” to graduate, since it depends on academic performance, but generally I think that most of the time, the standards set by most institutes and departments are sound.

   The situation regarding expelling students in Denmark is somewhat contradictory, since, at the same time, there is liberal policymaking meant to both incentivise universities _keeping_ students and pushing them through their degrees as fast as possible (with the loss of academic quality as a consequence) but also liberal policymaking meant to discourage and make the universities hostile to students, trying to have less people take on a university education. Basically, liberal policymaking has—as was to be expected—fucked the Danish university system.

   You see, at the same time, universities are funded through a so-called “taxi-meter” system, where the universities are given a certain amount of money based on each _graduating_ student, giving universities an incentive to try and keep as many students in the system, and to push them through the system as quickly as possible. This money is paid only for graduating students, and is meant to—as so much liberal policy is—”emulate” market forces, and make the universities more “efficient.”

   Meanwhile, there is also liberal and social democratic policies meant to dissuade students from applying for universities, and to make them leave the universities. This involves capped stipends, capped duration of studies, so-called “stop-tests” in the early semesters where failure means expulsion, forced exam-dates, a capped number of exam attempts, and so on and so on. These two policies do ofc. contradict each other.

   So is it “difficult” to graduate? I don’t know. I like to think that my professors, back when I was studying, had some academic pride and priciples, and judged students fairly, but at least the system incentivise the university, through a commodification of the system, to keep as many students as possible, while surrounding policies attempt to make as few people pass through the university.

   Add to this general widespread political anti-intellectualism and anti-academic sentiment, from the social democrats (perhaps even from the popular socialists recently) and rightwards, and you have a country where the universities and higher education generally isn’t treated particularly well.

5. So-and-so. I know several people who did most or all of the uni, but did not manage to actually finish it. It is not so much of a matter of anyone throwing you out, but more like if you stop doing stuff properly no-one is gonna inform you that now you’re in trouble nor proactively help you. If you don’t hand something in, it is 0 marks and see you next years unless you contact the teacher in a timely manner and have a reason.

   Most people leave uni unfinished due to not being able to write the thesis. There can be many different reasons for that, but the main one is that it’s a big chunk of work and if you cannot plan and work independently, you’re not going to stay in the timeline. Then comes “I’ll finish in the next year” and then “once it’s calmer at work” and in a few years you’ll be officially expelled and in like 5-10 years your friends and family stop asking about it.

   There are of course some people who manage to repeatedly fail a subject and get expelled for that, but it’s pretty rare. The entrance exams kinda should guarantee that the person can manage schoolwork. As for exams hardness, it really depends on the faculty and teacher, but I’d say most of the time the grades people get is like a normal distribution that’s somewhat tilted towards better grades. We have the ABCDE & fail system, I’d say most people get Bs and Cs, clever ones get As, stupid ones get Ds, but to get an E or F you usually have to both, lack in intelligence and lack in effort of studying. Of course there are also some exams that are just very hard or very easy, but most seem to be like that.

   Source: Been in uni for almost 10 years now and taken subjects in almost all departmets

6. Spain has a cultural problem with teaching culture in STEM degrees, particularly in engineering. It is extremely common to have classes with average marks of 3/10, barely a few students passing, and professors taking pride in their subject letting only the best pass (ignoring that forming the students, and not only judging them, is their role).

   Coupled with us being one of the bottom countries for math literacy in the developed world, it’s not uncommon to see students stuck at uni for years beyond the supposed degree length.

7. Depends on what you mean by “difficult to graduate”.

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   When I studied (2001-2006), only one fellow student of more than a hundred in my year (that I know of) was kicked out of the program for failing too many exams. And that guy was really unfit for this subject. And my alma mater is regarded as one of Germany’s most “elite” ones.

   Still, the pressure that the university put on its students to regularly pass exams was much higher than what e.g. my parents had in the 1970s: then, you could basically bumble along as long as you wanted without taking any exams, as long as you had the money to support yourself.

   At the same time, almost half of our year dropped out of our program by themselves withing the first 2 years. The problem was that the program (financial mathematics) was relatively new, so many people (inlcuding me) had no idea what to expect, and the name attracted a lot of people who would have otherwise justdied business administration and who were overwhelmed by the maths part (which was 80% of the whole show). Also, there was no entrance barrier in the form of certain hogh school grades you had to have, as opposed to subjects like law and medicine.

8. In Italy I attended a course of Engineering with other 200 people, only 30/40 of them graduated, only 4/5 with maximum votes.

   Master’s degree lessons are attended by only 20/30, maximum 50 students and are particularly difficult and sectorial.

9. It can really depend a lot on the uni and also the course. Some uni’s will have a cause that gets them a lot of prestige and for those being chucked off could be quite likely but in other courses at the same uni the chances could be a lot lower. When I was at uni there was one course that would only see about 25-30% graduation rate. While most of the course were probably 75-80%. It was a small uni mostly known for a couple of subjects and all the other subjects were a lot more relaxed.

10. In Italy the chances of getting kicked out of university are extremely low, probably due to the massive paradigm shift universities experienced after the two world wars. In public universities, access to most faculties is pretty much effortless, only some sects (especially STEM and health-related faculties) require students to face a quiz before they can enroll. Once you entered a faculty it is in your interest to graduate as quickly as possible, since the longer you stay a student, the more vexing the taxation you get to experience. A good percentage of students gets stuck in the middle of their studies or close to their completion, sometimes outright abandoning their path or university as a whole.

11. In Lithuania, I guess depends on university and the program? It’s much more likely that the student will leave before any official steps are taken. People usually feel when they’re failing academically and don’t wait

    But there is a threshold that if you owe more than 15 credits at a time, you’re out for “no performance”. Most of the courses had 5 credits each for me (though this coming one will have 10). So for you to be kicked out after only one semester, you really have to do absolutely nothing in half your classes and fail the exam _twice_.

    That’s speaking only about the grades though. I have seen more people kicked out (or threatened to be) for breaking academic honour code/overall rules.

12. Depends on the degree

    At my university, Engineering Informatics had 120 new students per year, but some subjects had 500 people enrolled very few could do it at first try. They had to do exams at the university canteen because it was the only room big enough to fit them

    As for my degree (Medicine), the official statistics are 90% of graduates never failed a year

13. it depends on the University and the course. Those with lots of maths, physics, and other similar subjects have a higher dropout rate. Private universities, which are known as diploma factories, on the other hand, have a close to 100% graduation