Leveling programs in Chilean universities: centralized management of dropout from student deficit and educational integration discourses
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21703/rexe.v25i.3276Keywords:
deficit, equity, higher education, integration, levelingAbstract
Leveling constitutes an aspect of the equity problematic in Chilean higher education, expressive of the massification it has experienced in recent decades. This paper addresses the way in which the general concern about the insufficient preparation of students coming from the most vulnerable sectors is recontextualized in different universities as a result of previous initiatives to promote their access. Based on the analysis of Academic Leveling Scholarship projects, implemented between 2019 and 2021 in six universities, this paper addresses the construction of these projects with a special focus on their problems and solutions. Based on a review of governmental, institutional and academic documents associated with these initiatives, and the interview of 12 professionals directly involved in their writing, the problematization in which they are inscribed is approached. Consistently, the general problem of leveling is intertwined with four other more specific problems, such as: institutional readiness for tuition-free students, the need to characterize and monitor their performance, and to favor their academic and social integration. These problems show an important centralism with which student dropout management is built, distanced from faculties and careers and, therefore, externalizing from the curriculum and the regular classroom the learning challenges of the leveling subject. This is a problematization in which the promotion of university learning is constructed unanchored from the field of pedagogy and teacher development.
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