ACCES TO HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH ICTs: THE CASE OF UNIDAD ACADEMICA SAN JULIAN-UNPA IN SANTA CRUZ, ARGENTINA

Abstract

The Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral (UNPA) is one of the three most recent national universities in Patagonia (later came Río Negro and Tierra del Fuego). There is no discussion of the expansion that has occurred in the access to higher education since the creation of those higher education institutions. However, more recently, the transition from a face-to-face education to a virtual mode, visualized as a way of "democratization of higher education", has increased the number of new students but not (in percentage terms and to date of closure of the analysis) the number of graduates. The approach presented here begins in the analysis of the discussions about the new universities and it is proposed to quantify the impact on the behavior of the enrollment that has had the implementation of a model of distance education based on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), transferring the entire educational process to technological mediation in the virtual platform, which has come to supplant the face-to-face modality (which we might call "traditional" in the sense that it preserves the central features of daily schooling inside the university buildings). The methodology of inquiry used is quantitative and the educational careers of one of the Academic Units of the UNPA are observed. The tables allow to characterize the dynamics of the enrollment while the attendance was face-to-face and then, when it happened to the virtual modality, trying to understand the academic trajectories developed by the students and the impact that the change of modality could have had in them. As a corollary, we present reflections that may be useful to continue thinking about the impact of ICT in higher education.