Repercussões socioeconômicas do curso piloto de administração a distância do sistema UAB na visão de egressos e coordenadores

Abstract

The Online education (OE) emerges as a tool of public policy capable of increasing the supply of various graduated courses. In 2006, with the regulation of the Open University of Brazil (OUB) emerge the first bachelor's degree in Business Administration distance the pilot course, taught from 2006 to 2011 for 22 Public Institutions of Higher Education, focus of the present study. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that led the graduates taking the course, the possible socioeconomic benefits and difficulties perceived by graduates and coordinators. The data collection took place in two stages. A quantitative descriptive - exploratory from a survey applied to graduates of the course. For this was conducted descriptive and multivariate analysis (cluster analysis). The other stage was qualitative descriptive and exploratory in that course coordinators of distinct Institutions were interviewed in order to identify their impressions of the course and the possible difficulties and benefits that the course provided for its graduates. For this it was used the technique of content analysis . Of the total 332 graduates surveyed, it was identified that 56 % are male and 44 % female. About the age, 29 % of respondents are included in the range of 31 to 40 years; 34% in the range of 41 to 50 years ; 27% in the 51-60 years , which demonstrated an older profile students of this course. Most of them are married (73 %), working as federal worker (82.8 %); has income above R$ 4,500.00 (62.3 %). Regarding education of surveyed before the course , 52% had only a high school education and 27 % incomplete graduation. Almost a majority (46 %) said they spent more than 12 years away from school before starting the course. From the cluster analysis, we identified that the social benefits as “greater capacity of argumentation”, “increased self-confidence”, among others, overcame the economic benefits as “increasing income” and “job change”. The factors that most influenced to take the course were “flexibility of distance education” and “gratuity of course”. The major difficulties were: “no time to carry out the activities of the course” and “difficulty learning myself”. For coordinators, the social benefits achieved by graduates also overcame the economic enefits. However, there were opposing perceptions between the vision of the graduates and coordinators. We conclude that the (pilot) course has become the benchmark for many Public Institution of Higher Education expand the supply of online education courses and could provide higher education for people who could not afford the traditional model.