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The massification of Argentine higher education intensified in the context of open-access and tuition free public university policies. Although Argentina stands out in relation to enrollment in higher education, it faces serious problems in terms of retention and graduation. To study the factors associated with dropout in the higher education system, we use the Permanent Household Survey, or EPH, to measure these phenomena. The EPH is a quarterly national survey that systematically and permanently collects data on the population’s demographic, educational, labor and socioeconomic characteristics. Based on the EPH, we calculated the global dropout and graduation rates by socioeconomic status and gender and used logistic regression models to estimate the effect of some demographic, socioeconomic, institutional and financial factors on dropout probability. Among the main findings, we observed that the socioeconomic status and being a first-generation student matter. We detected that being a first-generation student, even after controlling for the socioeconomic status of the student’s household, gender, the type of institution (tertiary non-university or university) and having a scholarship, implies a higher probability of dropout. We conclude that these results are most germane to public policy design and possible replications of this methodology in other Latin American countries.

The analysis of the equity of mass higher education systems in Latin America indicates how important it is to ensure that young people in the lower income sectors can study and obtain a degree. In this sense, the Southern Cone region constitutes an interesting case study to analyze the results in terms of access and graduation through the implementation of selective admissions policies, institutional diversification and privatization (Chile); or free and unrestricted access in the public sector in a diversified institutional environment (Argentina) or low institutional diversification (Uruguay). The comparative analysis of these countries reveals the relevance of analyzing not only the public and institutional policies of access and sources of funding and the evolution of the indicators regarding access and graduation in each case, but also of studying what occurs in terms of institutional differentiation, its association with social stratification and prestige allocation. Thus, the indicators show improvements over time, but in institutional contexts that maintain certain patterns of social inequality.

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This paper analyzes an innovative public policy introduced in Argentina in 2004 that links public funding to the accreditation of undergraduate courses. The Ministry of Education allocated three-year non-competitive funds to public universities so that undergraduate courses that had been accredited for three years could meet their commitment to fulfill improvement plans. To study this public policy we used the case study method, selecting the most important project in terms of the amount of resources allocated and the number of courses covered: the Project for the Improvement of Teaching Engineering Programs (PROMEI). We analyzed documents and quantitative evidence, in addition to conducting in-depth interviews with key informants and semi-structured interviews with the authorities of academic units. The findings show that the majority of the total degree courses financed by PROMEI were accredited for another three-year period. Moreover, the respondents positively evaluated the impacts of this project to overcome the weaknesses of the engineering programs detected during the accreditation procedure. The positive evaluation of this public policy is related to two factors: first, diverse actors from the engineering community participated in the formulation of the policy; second, the funding items took into account the multiple factors that intervene in order to improve the teaching activity. Finally, it had an additional unexpected effect by contributing to legitimize the quality accreditation procedures.

archivos analíticos de políticas educativas Revista académica evaluada por pares, independiente, de acceso abierto y multilingüe

The activity coefficient concept is one of the most difficult for students in the undergraduate physical chemistry course to grasp.