DISTANCE EDUCATION AND RETENTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ACCESSIBILITY, DROPOUT RATES, FEMALE INCLUSION, AND THE PERCEPTIONS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AT A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY IN RIO DE JANEIRO

Abstract

This article aims to develop a theoretical debate on some relevant aspects in the debate on distance education and permanence in higher education and to analyze the perceptions that a group of university students from a public institution has about permanence and dropout in distance education. To this end, the article focused on the theoretical debate of some central themes for this debate, such as, a) history of distance education and regulatory frameworks; b) Distance learning and university dropout; c) university permanence and distance learning; d) Inclusion and mobility through distance learning; e) female inclusion through distance learning; f) The perception of university students from a public institution about permanence and dropout in distance learning courses. In addition to the bibliographic analysis, an online questionnaire with 27 questions was applied to 11 university students from a public higher education institution in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The main considerations are that distance education has become one of the main laboratories in which different combinations of massification, flexibility and individual responsibility of students are experimented in Brazil. At the same time that the modality expands the territorial reach of the university, it shifts to the domestic space and to digital networks a significant part of the responsibilities for organizing time, managing study conditions, and seeking support in times of crisis. This displacement is experienced unequally by students with different material, symbolic and relational resources, which explains, to a large extent, the asymmetries of permanence observed between social groups. In the perception of the students, we have that some reasons for dropping out of distance learning courses are lack of motivation, indiscipline and lack of commitment from the student himself, lack of teacher for explanation, lack of interaction between students and teachers, time management, low familiarity with digital tools, financial issues, lack of pedagogical support.