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The paper adds to the literature on the costs of higher education by estimating an individualised valuation of time spent studying. This valuation, in addition to the direct costs and the forgone earnings, allows us to assess the overall costs of undertaking higher studies, which is crucial for accurately estimating the rate of return to education and understanding the mechanisms of human capital accumulation. We use a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to evaluate the disutility of time spent studying by a group of students of economics in a leading Central European university. We investigate the heterogeneity of preferences towards time allocation across genders. We estimate the parameters of the students’ utility function assuming a random utility model using multinomial logit (MNL) and random parameter logit (RPL). We found that for students of economics studying for an additional hour resulted in a disutility worth around EUR 2.95, which is a rough equivalent of the minimum net hourly wage rate in Poland. This value is however higher than the value attributed to the disutility related to an hour spent at work. The estimated value was strongly heterogeneous, depending on students’ personal characteristics.

This article researches higher education (HE) managers’ perception of graduate professional success and higher education institutions’ (HEI) activity aimed at enhancing graduate employability. The issue is worth examining not only because of growing relative unemployment rates among HE graduates but also because it is a part of a heated discussion on the contemporary evolution of HEIs. We analysed 36 semi-structured interviews with representatives of HEIs offering studies in the field of science in six countries (Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Turkey). Our analysis showed that there are three approaches observed, depending to a large extent on the balance between different HE stakeholders within subdomains (triple-helix theory). Our results support the hypothesis of diversification of HEIs’ models varying from the traditional ivory-tower-type university (with a dominating role of academic oligarchy) to the market-oriented educational enterprise (where the business sector is a key driver of change).