Abstract

This article presents the main results of a case study involving a sample of undergraduate business and economics students at a Spanish university, using the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST). The sample of students shares a reduced tendency to follow the so-called deep approach to learning, thus getting rated more highly on those items of the survey related to the strategic approach to learning. The surface approach to learning was given a medium-level rating, higher than that for the deep approach but lower than that for the strategic one. When comparing attitudes between business and economics students, results reveal that there is not a relevant distance between those two groups, since they share similar values according to their approaches to learning. The qualitative analysis carried out by us tended to reinforce the view that identifies students with the strategic approach to learning; besides, students showed some concern about the lack of usefulness of academic content in the development of their future professional career. The examination of student motivations suggests that an effort must be made to increase interest in the subject matter through attention to different strategies, for instance by applying different active learning techniques. The attitude shown by students can also be interpreted as the natural consequence of a system that does not allow the student any great scope to develop their own learning strategies.