domingo, 2 de septiembre de 2012

Causes of Failure (I)


Trying to figure out the causes of failure, I made a graph to illustrate the performance of our freshman in mathematics. I could only collected data for the total college of engineering (made of eight different majors). However, electrical engineering student's performance are not that differente than the other majors. Enrollment policies are the same.

Before getting into the electrical engineering department, freshmen are required to study  two years of physics and mathematics. Barely, less than 20% move ahead the very first year of mathematics. After the second year less than 10% of those enrolled keeps moving ahead.
Given this escenario, I  have been wondering a way out. There is no doubt that student who came to our university are poorly prepared. So, could MOOC ideas help secondary education in developing countries? Could it be used as a college remedial course kind of solution? At the University of El Salvador there is no remedial program. Students have no help. They are left at their own; ending as dropouts.








2 comentarios:

  1. Unfortunately, these types of findings are not pursued by the authorities in charge of running educational policies in the public system. There is just not an interest in solving such a critical situation and nothing is done to remediate....students are alone with their expectations, and they suddenly "realize" (in a wrong conclusion)that jumping into the surviving day by day sub-employment routine is the only hope. HL

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  2. This means not many students will graduate. But from the minority of students who graduate, an even smaller minority will finds jobs. Students are not only left alone to deal with higher education, but they have pretty much not hopes of advancing in life and putting all of their hard work to any use. Specially with a government that is unfriendly to businesses and attacks the private sectors (as FMLN is) unemployment has increased so much that it is unbelievable. El Salvador Economy is so low now that we are way below our level of development in 2007. (Of course the Government will not tell you that, they hide the truth from the people. This is a corrupt third world government after all.) El Salvador used to be the leader of Central America when it came to economical development. Now we are the last of Central America. Even Nicaragua -who used to be the last- is growing and attracting more foreign investment than El Salvador.

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