Student Academic Integration in College Education: a study about tourism college freshmen

Abstract

The entrance into college studies consists in a challenging stage, characterized by strong changes, by facing several and complex tasks to be performed by the student and considered really attached to the academic success throughout the graduation course. Once that tourism students are one of the least known groups, the current paper aims to identify and analyze the features of academic students' experiences in their first year of a college tourism course and their relation with the semester and the shift of the course. Thirty-five freshmen students from morning and night shifts of a private university from Minas Gerais (Brazil) made part of this study. As an instrument of data collection it was used the Questionário de Vivências Acadêmicas – versão reduzida (Academic Experiences Questionnaire) - short version (QVAr), a Likert type five-point scale, applied to the end of the first and second semesters of the course. The overall data show a pattern of academic integration of the tourism students close to patterns of other undergraduate courses. Regarding the relation between the academic integration and “semester” and “course shift” variables, significant differences between semesters were perceived being related to institutional domain, and between the shifts, being related to personal domain. Here it will be discussed the implications of the institutional conditions for the student’s integration process to college education.