University Student Attrition: An Unresolved Challenge for Institutional Management

Abstract

The research project “University Student Attrition: The Incidence of Endogenous and Exogenous Factors in the Academic-Curricular Process” was designed to produce specific and relevant information related to the problem of student attrition at the National University of Santiago del Estero. Its purpose was to provide basic input for decision-making at both the institutional management and academic-curricular management levels, aimed at improving educational quality.

In order to investigate factors exogenous to the academic-curricular process, information on students’ sociodemographic and cultural characteristics was collected through surveys. For the analysis of endogenous factors, documentary sources were consulted and semi-structured interviews were conducted, allowing us to examine the representations of students, parents, and teachers regarding “school failure”.

The analysis and interpretation of the representations of these three groups of actors reveal partial perspectives. On the one hand, there appears to be a naturalization of the problem, which evidences an absence of critical reasoning and the consequent denial of the possibility of solving it. On the other hand, responsibility for the deficits of incoming students is attributed to the low educational quality of the previous level, thereby overlooking the university’s co-responsibility and disregarding the impact of these deficits on the actual quality of education. Likewise, when teachers recognize this impact, they place responsibility for the solution at the institutional level, as both a direct and abstract referent.

It is therefore possible to ask to what extent the educational system, institutional educational management, and the actors themselves provide the conditions for producing and/or strengthening an attitude that, based on recognition of the problem, commits itself to integrating theoretical and empirical analyses with real efforts to achieve effective progress in reducing student attrition rates.