"All Work and No Play?" The Transition to University

Abstract

In New Zealand, University completion rates do not compare well with those in other OECD countries. For example, the New Zealand completion rate for tertiary students in 2008 was 58% in comparison to Australia whose rate was 72% and the United Kingdom whose rate was 79% (OECD, 2008). The recent Minister of Tertiary Education, the Honourable Anne Tolley, has signalled increased completion rates as an important target for New Zealand universities. For many students beginning university for the first time, their expectations of tertiary study do not match their actual experiences. This mismatch between expectation and experience can lead to stress, anxiety, and, under some conditions, failure in academic study. The first step in bridging the gap between student expectation and the realities of tertiary study is to understand students’ expectations about the transition to university. In the past, researchers interested in understanding students’ expectations of university life have used self-completed questionnaires or face-to-face interviews. Surprisingly, these two different ways of collecting information are typically used independently and the relative efficacy of each has never been compared. With this in mind, the goals of this thesis were two-fold. First, I examined first-year students’ expectations about their transition to university and how their expectations may or may not match their experience. Second, I compared the quantity and quality of information reported by students via questionnaires or face-to-face interviews. I found that participants provided significantly more information and information of higher quality during a face-to-face interview relative to a self-completed questionnaire. Furthermore, participants expressed common expectations, concerns, and hopes for university.