Desertion In Five University Programs At Universidad Del Valle

Universidad del Valle Semester August-December 2012
English composition VII Licenciatura en Lenguas Extranjeras
Professor Blanca Aparicio de Escorcia Student María Isabel Zamora Yusti

Research report
Title: Desertion in five university programs at Universidad del Valle
Abstract
The present was astudy applied at one of the most important Colombian universities, trying to establish the causes for this university to present high level of desertion, taking as sample five different study programs: two programs of foreign languages degree, nursery, electric and electronic engineering.
Desertion statistics data from the administratives was taken and compared to the results of interviews made tostudents and ex-students of all five programs. They were asked not only about the causes of desertion but also about their perceptions of how detected problems causing desertion could be solved or the situation be improved.

Introduction
At Universidad del Valle, a very important public university and the third most important in Colombia; desertion statistics are alarming, according to recentstudies (Gallego, 2011). This is a considerable problem, but it is not a recent phenomenon. Desertion is an issue the university has been trying to solve out for decades.
Taking into account that access to higher education in Colombia is only possible to 34% of the population and that public higher education is much harder to reach than the private one, desertion in a public university is ashame to all of the young people who didn’t succeed in the competence for a place, as with time, classrooms get emptier and emptier.
This report analyzes the statistics of desertion and collects the perceptions of students who finished the career; it does not seek to inquire deserters about their reasons to abandon study programs (which has been deeply researched by other Universidad del Vallestudents in their monograph projects, such as Gomez & Morales, 2012, concerning foreign languages degree).

Methods
In the present study, we took samples from the administrative registers of both men and women from five different study programs at Univalle, regarding: first, the admitted by 2004, second, those from the same cohort who were registered as active by 2008 and finally, the ones who,by 2010 had graduated. Consecutively, we analyzed the percentages differentiating men and women. In addition, some students and ex-students from each program were called and asked to give their opinions about the facts that prevented students in their programs from succeeding in pursuing their studies and what could be done to better support them and avoid desertion.
Results
Foreign languagesdegree (morning and afternoon programs)
In the morning program, a total of 45 students were accepted by 2008, where the number of women surpassed number of men by only 3 people. In this program, by the year 2010, a total of 13 men (out of 21) were gone, whilst 17 out of 24 women were still studying. To our astonishment, we see a drastic change on this rather stable number of women and also on thissmall group of men, as only one person for every gender had graduated six years after they were admitted. That is to say, by the year 2010, only two people from such cohort had a degree. When ex-students talked to us, they expressed to be concerned by the following factors: first, that most students who enter the program are not sure if it is what they want, second, many students have economicproblems and ought to look for a job, which often compromises their energy and time bringing consequences such as low grades and failing of courses, which can later discourage them from study or even prevent them from studying. In the interviewed proposed to have create the possibility of declaring oneself “difficult situation student”, according to the person’s situation, so that such a label...