Abstract
Higher education is one of the ways to overcome social inequalities in rural areas in developing countries. This has led states to develop public policies aimed at access, retention and timely graduation of students in those sectors, yet the high drop-out rates among the rural student population, which were catalysed by COVID-19, prevent the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of obtaining a higher education degree from materialising. Thus, the study of the phenomenon of dropout before and after the pandemic has not sufficiently addressed the economic issues raised by this phenomenon for the different actors at the educational level. The purpose of this paper is to model the economic effects of rural student dropout at the higher education level for students and families, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the State, based on public policies for access to higher education, in the pandemic and post-pandemic scenario. In order to delimit the operationalisation of the proposed model, a set of undergraduate training programmes in Colombia was taken as a reference. System dynamics was used as the main modelling technique. The model was based on data from the 20 training programmes with the highest number of students enrolled in rural areas for the year 2019, by running three computational simulations. The results showed the description of the dynamic model and the financial effects of dropout for the actors of the educational level with the current policies of access to higher education, the scenario in which COVID-19 would not have occurred and the consolidation of the public policy of tuition fee exemption in public HEIs as a result of the pandemic. It was concluded that the model developed is very useful for the valuation of these economic effects and for decision-making on policies to be implemented, given that the costs of dropout are characterised by high costs for students and their families as well as for HEIs, and where it was determined that current policies are inefficient in preventing and mitigating dropout.
Highlights
Higher education has been conceived as a way to overcome social inequalities in developing countries (Marginson, 2011; OECD 2015; Herbaut and Geven, 2020; Guzmán et al, 2021a), the interest of the states to intervene through the development of public policies with the aim of facilitating access, permanence and timely graduation of students at this level of education (Herbaut and Geven, 2020)
Taking into consideration what was previously stated added to the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been identified as a catalyst for problems at the educational level (e.g: Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021; Dennis, 2020; Mailizar et al, 2020; Abbasi et al, 2020; Sobaih et al, 2020; Favale et al, 2020; Basilaia and Kvavadze, 2020; Kerres, 2020; Wang et al, 2020), including dropout levels among the most vulnerable populations (Guzmán et al, 2021a; United Nations, 2020), a critical analysis of the economic effects of this pandemic on education stakeholders related to the drop-out phenomenon is required
As presented in the results section, the objective of this article was achieved, which was to model the economic effects of rural student drop-out at the higher education level for students and families, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the state, based on public policies for access to higher education, in the pandemic and post-pandemic scenario
Summary
Higher education has been conceived as a way to overcome social inequalities in developing countries (Marginson, 2011; OECD 2015; Herbaut and Geven, 2020; Guzmán et al, 2021a), the interest of the states to intervene through the development of public policies with the aim of facilitating access, permanence and timely graduation of students at this level of education (Herbaut and Geven, 2020). This was confirmed by the United Nations when it stated that by the year 2020, 80% of the world’s poor people would live in rural areas, and that in some countries the majority of the population would be concentrated in rural areas (United Nations, 2021) In this context, public policies developed by states to facilitate access, retention and timely graduation of students in rural areas of developing countries, especially in developing countries, have been based on a paradigm in which the state assumes the role of funder of students (Marginson, 2016; McCowan, 2016). Taking into consideration what was previously stated added to the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been identified as a catalyst for problems at the educational level (e.g: Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021; Dennis, 2020; Mailizar et al, 2020; Abbasi et al, 2020; Sobaih et al, 2020; Favale et al, 2020; Basilaia and Kvavadze, 2020; Kerres, 2020; Wang et al, 2020), including dropout levels among the most vulnerable populations (Guzmán et al, 2021a; United Nations, 2020), a critical analysis of the economic effects of this pandemic on education stakeholders related to the drop-out phenomenon is required
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