Duration of university studies in the Czech Republic and the effect of fees for excessive study duration

Topic of the thesis is the duration of studies at universities in the Czech Republic and the effect of fees for excessive study duration on the duration of studies. It focuses on undergraduate programs at public universities, for which the fees are applicable. Author exploits data from the national student register and data on the amount of fees from most Czech universities to build a regression model. Awareness of students on the fees policy was determined by questionnaire for participants of a widely used admission test (National Comparative Test Scio). It has been found, that at the average, 41% of students extended nominal length of study program before completing it, with highest share observed in humanities. About 10% of students extended the nominal length of study by more than one year. Fees apply to one-fifth of the students, half of them because their unsuccessful studies had been attributed to their actual length of study. The results show that time to degree is only insignificantly related to the potential amount of the fee; only in the case of students of one public university we have found mild relationship and CZK 1,000 fee increase should shorten time to degree by 6 days. Influence on the length of unsuccessful studies is more pronounced and represents 10 to 90 days per CZK 1,000. Low effect..