Abstract:Data from over 21,600 students who had left Catalan higher education institutions during the academic years 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 has been analysed in order to describe the academic and personal profiles of university dropouts. Additionally, a telephone survey and face-to-face interviews with a pilot group of leavers were undertaken to gather additional qualitative information on the reasons for their decision. The influences on non-completion can be reduced to three main factors, among which dissatisfaction with the quality of the students' experience, family and work responsibilities, as well as economic difficulties, are prominent.Analysis conducted showed no significant differences among Catalan higher education institutions, the dropout percentages ranging from 28% to 33%. These rates should be understood within a context of broad access to higher education. Within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) scenario, the findings have triggered institutional endeavours to improve the quality of the students' and teachers' experience.

questionnaire has been prepared and the opinions of 1,162 undergraduates have been analyzed. The reasons given by each population differ in hierarchy and motivations.

Degree transfer is understood as the increasingly common phenomenon among students of changing university degrees or university, especially after the first or second years of the degree. The profile of students who transfer (3,861students, 8.3% of students) is constructed based on microdata from the University Pre-enrolment Register of Catalonia and an explanatory model is validated by means of Multivariate Logistic Regression.Transfer refers to both changing the area of knowledge or the university and occurs most frequently in engineering, experimental sciences and social sciences degrees. The profile of the student who transfers is male, does not balance paid employment with studying, has completed baccalaureate in a private or a statefunded private school, and is upper middle class with both parents with a higher-level education working in higher management positions or liberal occupations. His level of use of social networks and digital communication tools is very high.

Science parks are institutions that support the creation and development of high technology-based companies. They are designed to provide value-added services together with high-quality space and facilities and to promote interaction amongst universities, R&D institutions, companies, and markets. Although Spain is among the countries that have been investing heavily in these institutions, there is lack of feedback from the tenant companies' perspective with respect to the value added that they receive from science parks. The objective of this study is to evaluate the services that the Barcelona Science Park offers to its tenants by gathering information from the companies currently located in the park and those that have graduated. By comparing the results obtained from the two groups of companies, incubated and graduated, we examine whether the opinions differ about their appreciation of the services that they benefited from during their stay in the Park than those currently remaining.

Low levels of Physical Activity (PA) and sedentarism are associated with the onset of different pathologies and health problems. Regular physical activity has been linked with being beneficial to the health of the general population. Within this framework of analysis, the aim of the present study was to analyze the association between the time spent doing physical activity and the expressed motives for doing so, from which the innovative aspect of the paper emerges: the use of the time spent doing PA as a study variable of the phenomenon. The data analyzed come from the latest special Eurobarometer survey about the sport and physical activity done in Europe. Using an exploratory factorial analysis and a structural equations model, a six-dimensional factorial model was found that explains the reasons for doing PA, demonstrating that there is no relationship between the reasons for and time spent doing PA. The motivation is not a variable that explains the time spent doing PA, and another type of variable must be used to explain the phenomenon if PA is to be incentivized. Weaknesses of the study are that it works with individuals as a group and that the fundamental dependence on age is not introduced, which could determine interest in practicing PA. Similarly, the impact of the conditions of implementing PA, education, and family history should also be introduced into the model.