2023-07-23 19:30:51
In the country where university excellence is public, free and has no quotas, the downward trend to study at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) persists. It is seen in the number of registrations for the first quarter of the Common Basic Cycle (CBC) 2023. They fell 11,4% compared to last year. Was 55,857 noted for all his races compared to 63,044 in 2022.
It is a fall of more than 16% compared to the record of 2021, when there were 66,651 registered. The motivation that year was virtuality, something that did not happen only in the UBA, which during the coronavirus quarantine also received more registrations from within the country and even from abroad.
If the extraordinary rise of two years ago is not considered, the UBA had been growing. But in 2022 it already showed 4% fewer entrants and the figure today was even below pre-pandemic records.
In the first quarter of 2019, 62,054 had been registered, 10% more than now, and before, in 2018, 58,626, 5% more. The last lowest figure had been in 2017, with 53,383 scored, but that number had implied an increase of 5% compared to the previous year.
The Faculty of Medicine of the UBA. Photo Mario Quinteros
Felipe Vega Terra is the director of the CBC and tells Clarion that although there is a significant year-on-year drop, “the tuition is very high”and that this downward trend “is a picture linked to two variables.”
One is the culmination of average levels during the pandemic. “They went through their last years of high school in quarantine. Added to the psychosocial, many students did not allow them to acquire knowledge in the ideal way.” remark difficulties that are being seen in subjects such as Mathematical Analysis and Algebra.
The other photo, he says, is the economic situation. “That’s the backdrop that young people think about. We’re concerned about how they get out of high school and what prospects they have going into college.”
Clarion consulted for the CBC’s promotion rate during the pandemic, that is, how many people approved it during virtuality, and the data, which requires “between a year and a half and two” to be processed, is not yet closed.
“But we see that decreased the amount of promoted (before taking the end of the subjects) compared to 2019 and previously”, anticipates Vega Terra.
What does this fall in the university panorama mean? The Doctor of Education and professor of the Education Area of the School, Marcelo Rabossi, also attributes it to something typical of economic crises.
“They have an impact on the demand for higher education. In the private sector, due to not being able to meet the quotas. But they also affect the public sector. Many young people or stop studying because they have to go to workor reduce the number of hours they dedicate to studying, thereby increasing the probability that they will drop out,” he tells Clarion.
At the same time, he agrees with the director of the CBC that “if we want to increase the number of graduates, we must first solve the problems in the previous levelsfrom preschool to high school.
“Not only to increase the number –says Rabossi– but that those who graduate have the necessary skills to go through a successful university life. And neither of these two things happen. We continue with a low number of high school graduates and their level of preparation is much less than satisfactory.”
The races with more and less registered
In this general decrease in entrants to the CBC, strictly speaking, we must start with the faculties that showed the greatest drop and crushed the total number. And in the one of social Sciences you can talk about a collapse.
For that faculty in the first quarter, 26% fewer students were registered than last year (1,655 against 2,251). The trend was clear since last year, when they were 30% less than in the first four months of 2021.
The Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA is one of the ones with the lowest number of enrollees. Photo Luciano Thieberger.
And if compared to 2018 -when Sociales reached almost 4,000 applicants-, in 2023 almost 58% fewer students signed up: lost more than half in 5 years.
In the Sociology major, barely 115 were scored; in Social Work there were 242; in Political Science, 254; the majority registered in Communication, with 636 registered; and Labor Relations had 408.
“It is a global trend. Enrollment is changing from Humanities to Science, Technology, Health. The drop in Social is linked to work outputwhich does not work as an attraction in these careers, but also to general trends, such as the strength that certain disciplines – Health Sciences, Medicine, Pharmacy, Technology – have in the real life“he points.
In Social Sciences, 26% fewer students registered than last year during the first quarter. Photo Luciano Thieberger.
According to data from 2022, similar careers from public universities in the Conurbano have been growing. As Sociology at the University of San Martín (Unsam) and Tres de Febrero (Untref); o Social Communication in Lomas de Zamora and also Untref. Why is studying Social Sciences at the UBA less and less attractive?
“The UBA in these careers competes with many universities, private and public. Politic science for example, it has competition with practically all the universities in the AMBA. They are careers that have less differential, less tradition in the UBA”, says the director of the CBC.
Social is not the only faculty that fell into the aspirational of admission to the UBA. In Philosophy and Letters they signed up 21% less than last year and in Right the descent was from 15%.
There is another key piece of information: unlike Social Services, which has been falling for several years, Law is in its second year of decline. A fall that seemed seasonal, annual, could become a trend.
Speaking of careers with tradition and prestige, there is no doubt that the UBA is the most attractive offer in various vocations. Medicine is in the lead.
Medicine has 17% fewer enrollees than last year but the enrollment continues to be “high”, they maintain at the UBA. Photo File / Lucia Merle
“It is a UBA race that has no competition. This year there were fewer registered than last year (down 17%), which were 20,004, but enrollment is still very high: 16.624. We are entrenched in traditional careers, there is no transfer there to private ones or to the universities of the Conurbano. Also in all those that have to do with Science and Technology, which are growing. Engineering comes in handy”, concludes Vega Terra.
The decrease also occurred in Agronomy (17%) and Economics. But in Psychology, which dropped 11% in the number of enrollees compared to last year, the general enrollment for that career at the UBA is larger than entire universities.
Compared to last year, they grew odontology18% (1,187 against 1,406 now), architecture and urbanismalmost 2% (7,267 against 7,385), veterinary (2%) y exact Sciences.
As expected, the careers that have been showing attractiveness are those linked to computing and informatics. And the “perlite” is the new Bachelor of Data Science. In only four years of existence, it was for the second consecutive year the most chosen within the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences.
But his current 525 CBC subscribers are down from 599 last year.
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