Authorities of national universities advance in the "sincerity" regarding the duration of undergraduate careers and their adaptation to "real students". It is that they detected that while in theory the careers have a duration of 5 years, the real time in which students take to receive is 9 years on average.
The "sincerity" is part of the declaration that, in 2021, made the Ministry of Education, the Secretariat of University Policies (SPU) and the National Interuniversity Council (CIN), where they defined seven guidelines of university policies to work post-pandemic, facing 2030. Among them, the revision of the distance between the theoretical duration and the actual duration of the races.
In the statement they affirmed that there is a "very wide" gap between the theoretical and the actual duration and "only 29.6% of Argentine university students graduate in the expected theoretical time," according to SPU.
With the aim of shortening this gap, national universities such as San Martín (Unsam); Villa María, in Córdoba; that of Cuyo (Uncuyo); Río Negro; Rosario, Santa Fe; and the National Technological University, are carrying out surveys and reviews consulted intra-institutionally with teachers, graduates and students, in order to implement innovations guaranteeing educational quality, which allow not only sincere, but -in some cases- shorten careers, and adapt plans to current and real learning subjects.
The University of Cuyo is one of the five national houses of study that speak of "sincerity" in the duration of the careers.
Based on information from the Siu Guaraní system, which records students' grades, Uncuyo accessed the actual duration of careers at that university and the data showed that "it takes on average 90% longer than the theoretical duration", which means that for a five-year career it takes nine.
"It's a lot," Uncuyo's academic secretary, Julio Aguirre, summarized to Telam, and the academic secretaries and rectors of other universities agreed on the diagnosis.
Among the factors of the delays, UNCUYO detected causes linked to the current lifestyle of the students; and the structure of their careers, curricula and teaching practices, something that is repeated in other universities.
To deepen the analysis, the house of studies also delineated the "real students" versus "ideal students" foreseen in the curricula, and reaffirmed that "the theoretical student does not exist", because "when a study plan is created they estimate that a student has 40 hours per week to study, study, do internships", but "real students: More than 50% work, about 20% have dependent children, more than 50% have people under their care," he said.
"Real students can't face this curriculum design," Aguirre said.
The challenge, then, "is to shorten the time of the races without reducing content, detecting repetitions, improving didactics and the way of evaluating," he said.
In the same sense, the academic secretary of the National Technological University (UTN), Liliana Cuenca Pletsch pointed out that "in engineering careers 4,100 hours are proposed in five years and a student should dedicate 11 hours a day six days a week to study. "
"That does not exist," he reaffirmed, "less in engineering, that most students from third year generally work."
Meanwhile, the rector of the National University of Rosario (UNR), Franco Bartolacci, indicated that an important measure – but not the only one – to be able to reverse the gap is to "modify the number of hours", and that was what they specified a month ago with a regulation in the UNR that established the minimum hours required by the Argentine university system for each career will be taken as the maximum.
However, he stressed that "we must work on the overlapping of contents, correlations and equivalences."
The current legislation establishes for the bachelor's degrees a floor of 2,600 hours and four years, and for the careers included in article 43 of the Law on Higher Education (such as Medicine and Engineering) a higher floor of number of hours and years is established.
Unsam is one of those that analyzes how to reduce the real time of the duration of the races.
The National University of San Martín also investigates the time it takes students to meet academic demands compared to what teachers think, and the first data showed that "it takes them much longer than teachers consider," the academic secretary general of Unsam told this agency. Alejandra De Gatica.
"The honesty aims to say that in reality the race is not 12 or 16 hours a week, but, at least, 40. You have to inform, because if they do not live an experience of permanent frustration by not being able to complete what is proposed", because "80% of our students work full time", he explained.
From the six universities they also stressed that the students fulfill care tasks.
From the National University of Villa María (UNVM) they also detected that the delays were linked to "unnecessary rigidities" in their curricula such as the "excessive load of annual subjects and correlativities", which made them more flexible, the academic secretary of the UNVM Javier Díaz Araujo told Telam.
Meanwhile, the director of the quality office of the National University Río Negro (UNRN), Graciela Giménez, explained that there are two phenomena associated with performance that "are quite serious in that they prevent graduation: desertion in the first year, something common in all universities in the country, and the slowdown in permanence."
The six universities carry out different plans in the face of this.
At Uncuyo the curricular sincerity program is framed in student-centered learning and they review the entire curricular design that point of view together with teachers, to detect the time it takes them not only to study, but to read the material, carry out the work, and take the exams, said Aguirre.
In the same way, from Unsam, at this moment they are facing an "innovation program," said De Gatica.
In the case of Unsam, the objective "is not to shorten careers, but to analyze academic proposals, both curricula from the curricular aspect and teaching practices," he said.
With the flexibilizations in the curricula, the UNVM "improved the number of graduates and reduced the graduation time," by reducing almost 300 hours in all careers enabling different dynamics, said Díaz Araujo.
Finally, from UTN, they addressed the change in the teaching methodology and a 'curricular adaptation' based on minimum contents and training by competences, concluded its academic secretary.
Source: Télam.
MG
See also