What Drives Graduate Satisfaction Depends on the Degree Field, Catalan Survey Suggests

A large analysis of graduate satisfaction surveys in Catalonia indicates that the same dimensions of the university experience do not carry equal weight across academic disciplines. The study, published in the journal Higher Education, examined how three widely used measurement dimensions — Teaching and Learning, Student Support, and Learning Outcomes — relate to overall satisfaction among Bachelor's graduates, and found that their relative importance varies systematically by field of study. The authors argue that common satisfaction dimensions can support system-wide comparison without assuming that they relate to overall satisfaction in the same way across academic fields.

The evidence comes from the Catalan Graduate Satisfaction Survey covering the years 2018 to 2023. The dataset included 2,993 programme-year observations drawn from Bachelor's programmes across five fields: Arts and Humanities, Social and Legal Sciences, Sciences, Health Sciences, and Engineering and Architecture. Because the observations span multiple years and programmes, the researchers used panel data models, which allow the analysis to account for the repeated, structured nature of the data rather than treating each programme-year as an isolated case.

The study is observational: it measures associations between dimension ratings and overall satisfaction at the programme level, and the reported coefficients describe those relationships rather than demonstrating causal effects of any particular intervention. Across the full sample, all three dimensions were positively related to overall graduate satisfaction. Teaching and Learning, however, emerged as the strongest dimension overall.

Its estimated association with overall satisfaction was significantly larger in each of the four other fields than in Engineering and Architecture, with the biggest differences appearing in Arts and Humanities and in Sciences. Student Support showed a more fragmented, field-specific pattern. The dimension was statistically significant within Social and Legal Sciences and within Engineering and Architecture.

Yet when the researchers ran direct comparisons against Engineering and Architecture, significant differences appeared only for Arts and Humanities and Health Sciences. This combination — significance within some fields but limited cross-field differences — suggests that support services matter unevenly across the university system, and that the pattern cannot be summarised by a single ranking of fields. Learning Outcomes behaved differently again: the dimension remained comparatively stable across the sample, with no statistically significant cross-field differences detected by the analysis.

The authors frame these results as a distinction between measurement comparability and interpretive equivalence. The survey instruments can remain comparable across the system, allowing universities and regulators to track satisfaction on the same dimensions everywhere. What differs is how those dimension scores should be read: a strong or weak Teaching and Learning score carries different informational weight in an Arts and Humanities programme than in an Engineering programme, while Learning Outcomes scores can be compared more directly across fields.

A field-sensitive interpretation therefore retains a common measurement core without forcing every discipline into the same evaluative template. The study covers Bachelor's programmes in one regional system over a defined survey window, so the coefficients describe that population and period; the broader claim is methodological rather than universal — that satisfaction metrics can be shared system-wide while their interpretation is calibrated to the academic field being evaluated.

Subject of Research: Graduate satisfaction and its dimension-specific relationships across academic fields in Catalan higher education

Article Title: Beyond “one size fits all”: graduate satisfaction across academic fields

Article References: Llach, J., & Casadesús, M. (2026). Beyond “one size fits all”: graduate satisfaction across academic fields. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01782-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10734-026-01782-3

Keywords: higher education, graduate satisfaction, quality assurance, panel data, academic fields, Catalonia, survey research, Bachelor's programmes, teaching and learning, student support, learning outcomes, Beyond