As part of the 2030 Agenda, higher education has been conceptualised as one of the ways to overcome the social disparities experienced in rural areas in Colombia. Thus, in concordance with the benefits of this level of education, the state has been designing public policies during the last few years, in order to facilitate access to undergraduate programmes to these populations, focusing mainly on the implementation of the virtual modality. In this context, it is recognised that access itself is not enough, but that continuance and timely graduation are required to materialise the benefits obtained along with a higher education degree; hence, dropout is a subject of interest for study, especially due to the high rates existing in the rural student population. Therefore, the event of dropout becomes an obstacle to social change and transformation in rural areas. Thus, this article aimed to identify which individual, institutional, academic and socio-economic characteristics influence rural student dropout in virtual undergraduate programmes in Colombia. For this purpose, an exploratory, quantitative and cross-sectional study was proposed, with a sample of 291 students to whom a student characterisation instrument and a classroom evaluation instrument were applied. With these data, it was proceeded to establish which of them had deserted, constituting the extraction of the sample of the study, which were 168. With the information, an exploratory factor analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis and descriptive statistics were used to establish which explanatory variables are involved in the dropout of this type of student. The results showed that the academic variables analysed do not have an impact on the event, while marital status (associated with family obligations), age, social stratum, work obligations, parents’ level of education and type of work, income and type of employment relationship of the student, and, finally, the number of people who depend on the family’s income do.

1. Education is considered a fundamental factor for the progress of nations (Guzmán et al., 2021c; Herbaut & Geven, 2020; Lasso et al., 2020; OECD, 2015) due to the individual and social benefits i...

La deserción limita los beneficios personales y sociales de la educación. En este sentido, los estados e instituciones educativas buscan prevenir y mitigar este fenómeno mediante el desarrollo de políticas públicas e institucionales, sin embargo, la complejidad del fenómeno es tal, que estas políticas son insuficientes y no se encuentran del todo articuladas con las realidades de los estudiantes, de ahí que persistan las elevadas tasas de deserción. Así, el objetivo del presente artículo fue establecer las causas de la deserción estudiantil en la educación superior rural a partir de un modelo conceptual basado en pensamiento sistémico a partir de las narrativas de un grupo de estudiantes colombianos. Para su cumplimiento se realizó un estudio cualitativo, en el que participaron 19 estudiantes. El análisis se realizó mediante codificación abierta para la identificación de variables que incidían en este fenómeno educativo, y se finalizó con un modelo basado en diagrama de bucles causales. Los resultados evidenciaron que las obligaciones laborales y familiares, la condición financiera del estudiante y el rol de los docentes son las variables más recurrentes en los participantes. Finalmente, a partir de las variables encontradas y el modelo, se proponen acciones que deben ser incorporadas en el marco de las políticas públicas e institucionales para prevenir y mitigar el fenómeno de la deserción.

Introduction: Student dropout, as a dynamic and complex system, requires a broad conceptualization. The aim of this article is to analyze the concept of student dropout in higher education, with the aim of effectively addressing it at various levels, including both institutional and societal.Methods: Using a mixed-methods approach, dropout patterns were traced, and a model was designed and validated using anonymized data from 17,328 students at a Colombian higher education institution offering face-to-face programs.Results: Results from decision trees and survival analysis highlight the significance of economic and academic factors in increasing the risk of dropout and contributing to low graduation rates. It has been confirmed that the first two years of enrollment in the educational institution are crucial for the likelihood of dropout, and that extended time spent at the institution also increases the risk of dropout.Discussion: The study highlights the dynamic complexity of student dropout and emphasizes the importance of continuously updating models by integrating diverse analysis techniques. Socioeconomic status and academic performance emerged as key factors, with a focus on students at intermediate levels.

The growing dropout and low permanence of rural students in higher education has become a central problem in the education system, both affecting the quality conditions of training programmes and preventing the materialisation of the benefits that achieving this educational level entails for society. However, the study of these events in rural populations is scarce, resulting in an inadequate treatment of dropout and, consequently, the impossibility of consolidating student permanence. Thus, the aim of this article is to identify which individual, academic, socio-economic, and institutional variables influence the dropout and the retention of the rural student population in higher education. To achieve this purpose, a cross-sectional study was defined. The sample used was a non-probabilistic sample with an n of 269 rural Colombian students who were administered a self-report questionnaire that assessed 59 variables. Data analysis was based on means comparison and cluster modelling. The results show that dropout and permanence in rural students is related to the educational level of the father, family and work obligations, the need to move from their place of residence, the academic average in higher education, satisfaction with the choice of programme, communication with the institution, and the attention of teachers, among other things.