The state of citizen abilities in university students of Chile, Colombia, and Mexico

Abstract

The educational field proposes to develop the most qualified professionals in all senses, not only academically. This includes the formation of citizenship skills that students must possess in order to train the professionals of the future. To measure civic engagement in university students, three Latin American higher education institutions joined forces. These were the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Chile), and the Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico); through these joint efforts, a citizenship laboratory was created. This article was descriptive in scope, and the general objective was to describe the state of citizenship skills in university students. The methodology consisted of formulating an instrument, specifically a survey, which integrated 42 items; it was divided into socioemotional, citizenship and global skills. Subsequently, the data were processed using the statistical program R. The most relevant findings are that there is an area of opportunity, especially in terms of their participation in student organizations, in order to exploit their abilities as much as possible.