Evaluation of applicants' satisfaction index in engineering courses in Portugal during pre- and Post-Bologna period

In this work we describe and characterize students’ allocation satisfaction in the Portuguese public higher education system, through the students' own point of view, namely in academic engineering programs, extending previous studies by the author's team. We compare the ratio provided by the Portuguese Ministry of Education with the institutions' point of view, the demand satisfaction index with the ratio proposed, and the applicants’ satisfaction index for the Pre- and Post-Bologna period. The dataset used in this paper was provided by the Portuguese Education Institute and covers the results of the national contest from 1997 to 2015. Non-parametric tests were performed in order to assess whether there are significant differences between the ratios and to allow a better understanding of the applicants’ satisfaction index in engineering courses during Pre- and Post-Bologna period.