engleski

Why (not) study longer? Analysis of duration of undergraduate studies at Faculty of Forestry in Zagreb

Although forestry is often considered as a traditional field of applied science, it resumes its importance in context of increased awareness of climate change and benefits coming from natural ecosystems. Updated and contemporary study programmes are needed to ensure an adequate education on managing forest ecosystems and its products. A better insight in student background and their motivation for studies are welcome to improve the study programmes and also to find the ways how to help students achieve better results. A case study research was carried out to measure success of studies by duration of studies and average grades achieved, with possible causes in the financial support. Three undergraduate study programmes on Zagreb Faculty of forestry were analyzed (Forestry N=94, Urban forestry N=54 and Wood technology N=39), with data acquired from a questionnaire among forestry graduate students on the same faculty academic year 2016/2017. A Factorial ANOVA was performed to test differences between the studies, a Kaplan-Meier estimator for the duration by years and a linear regression for the influence of predictor variables on the duration of study. Although this profession is associated with people from rural areas, about one third of all students comes from the capital city, with significant majority on WoodTech (52%), and 25% and 34% on Forest and UrbanFor, respectively. Students of WoodTech are mostly coming from vocational schools (70%) while Forest and UrbanFor students are mostly from gymnasiums (67% and 83%). For about 91% of students main motivation was a personal sake rather than a family interest (9%). Average scores and the duration of study on three study programmes have not been proven significantly different between the studies, nor between male and female students. A longer time of study is proven to negatively correlate with the average grades on all study programmes: Forest (-0, 559), UrbanFor (-0, 554) and WoodTech (-0, 378). Common predictors for duration (with logarithmic transformation) on all study programmes in regression analysis were the average grade and a personal motivation, both with negative sign, thus leading to a shorter study time. Obtained grant is proven to reduce the duration for WoodTech and Forest, and not for UrbanFor. Type of High school was a good predictor only for WoodTech programme, where a vocational school is shown to increase the duration of study.

forestry education ; duration of study ; ANOVA ; regression analysis

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