This article studies the elements that make group work beneficial for university student learning. It reviews the literature on the subject and presents the results of quantitative research based on survey data obtained in 2010 from approximately 1000 students of four public universities in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. An analysis is made to show how group work is affected by each of the indicators that make up Maslows hierarchy of needs pyramid, adapted to the university world by Prescott and Simpson (2004). The results demonstrate that for this methodology to be beneficial, its application needs to reach certain quality thresholds. The article also concludes that, in some degree courses, the Bologna Reform (1999) has failed to enable these thresholds.