Towards a culture of welcoming to university: what the students of the first degree course of the University of Lleida think about the welcome program

Abstract

In recent years universities have introduced programs to accommodate students of new recruits in order to facilitate their integration in the institution. The work is based on a survey of first grade students at the University of Lleida at the end of the welcome program that this institution held in September of 2009. The surveys’ objectives were to assess the functionality of the reception program, in order to introduce improvements, and also establish the relationship between variables such as degree of motivation of students, their perception of the usefulness of the program and the expectation of their successes in studies that they had just began. The paper concludes that these variables are closely related and suggests improvements to be made in terms of program elements in order to increase students’ satisfaction.