Patricio Alberto Cullen & Liliana Mabel Marinelli Universidad Tecnológica Nacional Facultad Regional Delta (Argentina)
Abstract
In Argentina have been implemented in the last two decades reforms in the legal system of education systems at all levels whose results have not improved the quality of education but instead have deepened their progressive deterioration, forming a gradual and sustained crisis in the time is strongly affecting fundamental to building a just society pillar: training of its citizens. This negative situation impacts the chances of success of inclusive economic and social policies.
Educational reforms, beyond its laudable goals, have failed in their implementation producing an education that seems deepen an inconspicuous and elegant print increasingly marked social differences manner. Cultural values show signs of deterioration, the importance attached to formal knowledge, and therefore educational institutions and educators, quickly weakens a society that seems to show signs of assessment of academic training as a key driver of equity.
In this framework, university and non-university education has been losing credibility and prestige in recent years.
This paper attempts to reflect critically on the current status of university systems in particular how it impacts the general crisis in the training of engineers, and formulate conclusions.
The methodology used is the observation results in undergraduate assessments, analysis of the academic career of the students in the five levels of the curriculum, case studies segmented by geographical distance students, their schools of origin, level socioeconomic and processing of information obtained, including contrasts observed in attitudinal aspects of students trained in middle school state and private management.
The instruments used were interviews, surveys, surveys in field tests, diagnostic tests and monitoring input "performance" until graduation or dropout early or late.
A priority effort and responsibility required under continuous education policies and long-term, looking at the implementation grant greater autonomy to each unit management system and agreeing with educational associations involving specific measures necessary changes from day to day.
Keywords: Education, Crisis, Equality
1. Introduction
The Argentina is going through a deep and prolonged crisis of their education systems, which has tried to revert from the political levels with radical reforms in the legal system and tools to implement them in the Federal Council of Educacion. The principal objective of this work is to postulate that the results have not been as expected, but has aggravated the crisis in education which causes a sharp increase in inequality for the population directly affected by a crisis that is not likely to temper its effects. This population is composed of the two lowest quintiles in the level of income or poor. To come to the diagnosis there has been revised the evolution of the system of revenue from 1995 and analyzed the pupils' cohorts i in 2005 until 2014 in the Regional faculty Delta of the National Technological University using surveys made out to teachers and pupils, evaluations earlier, during and after the University Seminar of Revenue and conversations with managers of schools and of companies and social modality of the region.
Although the analysis has been focused in suction pupils to study engineering it is considered that the sample is sufficiently representative as to reveal the state of the education in general for the reasons that express themselves next:
The applicants' average to the careers of engineering of the Regional faculty Delta is 500 pupils per year, number raised for the population of its area of influence, what is explained for being a clearly industrial area with big companies that prepare products of high quality for the markets of the whole
world in the iron and steel, self-propelled sectors, chemical and petrochemical. The origin of these pupils is of technical schools, and of those of secondary level in its different orientations placed in the most important cities of the region and also of semi urban and rural areas, in all the cases both of state and private management. Also the segmentation is representative for economic level of the familiar group.
Ten studied cohorts were allowed to have excellent information to analyze objectively the conditions in which the applicants come to the engineering careers in the Regional faculty Delta as for the grade of effective appropriation of the knowledge curricular proper from the previous level. Also, in particular, the surveys and interviews show them, they were allowed to postulate with a good possibility of wise moves which is its perception of what means the engineer's profession and its social relevancy and, also, its values scale with regard to the motivation and the commitment to pawn the effort and perseverance that supposes tackling the engineering studies.
The gathering of quantitative and qualitative information during the last ten years of work was administered for its use by the members of the Group of Investigation of Access and Permanence, it created in 2005 and that is developing at present its fourth Project that, like three previous ones, was framed in the paradigm of investigation – action, that is to say that the conclusions of each of the Projects the base was to impel reforms in the design and putting in act of the University Seminar of Revenue tending to change the fundamental problems of the access and permanence in the elected university education, advising even on possibilities of going on to another engineering and, also, one worked with informal tutorship’s with the pupils of the first and second level impelling formal support systems in the most arduous matters of the stretch of basic sciences of the careers of engineering and development of concrete hardware for support tutor to the pupils, including the emotional aspects, reporting on the possibilities of social, cultural and sports activities in the ambience of the faculty.
For reasons from which it would turn out to be excessive for the rules established for the presentations in this academic meeting to exhibit and to comment on the volume of information obtained in ten years of work, they have to comment on the analyzed main aspects and the conclusions obtained as regards the problems of the access to the university and the permanence distinguishing what is understood by early desertion (the first and second level and late desertion).
2. Access and Early Desertion
The access across the University Seminar of Revenue (SUI) of the Regional faculty Delta of the National Technological University (FRD-UTN) crossed between 1995 and 2014 substantial changes in its hourly load presential and in its contents determined essentially by the early desertion of students in the revenue itself and in the first and second level. In the first ten years summer courses developed (45 intensive days) of Mathematics, Physicist and Chemist and Workshop of University Orientation with approval instances until June or allowing to study with hanging matters the first four-month period of the first year of the grade. As a result of the increasing desertion in the first year there became more rigid progressively the opportunities of approval of the matters and it passed off the course of five days per week for six summer weeks to a four-monthly course of fifteen weeks from August until November of three days per week, to which one added an optional course in the first four-month period with character essentially of concepts and the possibility of examinations in character of free of pupils who, without studying, were in conditions to approve the last recovery instance for the regular ones of each of the subjects of the revenue. This form of free examinations only was approved in average by one per cent of the ingresantes or not more than five every year (strong indicator of the crisis of the secondary level, because the contents of the SUI are an extract of the contents curriculares supposedly already appropriate.
For all the rest these examinations before to the experienced one they have a diagnostic value so that the pupils know that they will have to reach level.
From 2005, and according to the analyses of the evolution of the SUI and of its results, there was solved the formal creation as group of investigation of the Group of Access and Permanence, which quickly gathered to the task of designing a SUI of annual duration with materials of study especially conceived by the members of the GAP for applicants to the engineering careers. Finally in the last years there was extended the hourly load of the Workshop of University Orientation to include basic notions of epistemology and of logic and the mathematics dictation passed of four-monthly to annual remaining others three with four-monthly character.
The summary of obtained results is the one that we provide next:
3. Conclusion
The pupils invoke its step along the secondary school from a critical and declamatory position since they understand that the indispensable knowledge has been transmitted to us to continue with its
studies. They emphasize the poor formation in sciences and the professionals' projection absence in ambiences of development and innovation. One of the arguments explicit the non-conformism with which professionals who dedicated years to its studies, end up by teaching sciences in a secondary school for lack of real possibilities or hourly development on the labor market. On the other hand, many of these pupils, they concluded that in its first steps along the career, the alone target was the economic progress and not the capacity of development or mental opening that could generate learning.
The question is a knowledge of that time what attributes the young people grants him to the education today. For our surprise, 75 % did not see any difference between be educating and without doing it and 56 % might have continued humanistic nature careers if the University that was giving it was located in the outskirts. Therefore, a part of the pupils' population of the career of engineering does it for the closeness that offers him.
Undoubtedly, the interventions that the University has had with regard to implementing extensive courses for learning in the matters earlier mentioned it has been of big help and year by year they can turn the gradual progress in the final results. It even is missing very much, in this way it will follow up to finding the way of motivating the young people and of cheering them up to a formation like engineers.
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