Abstract:

In Mexico, economic sustainability in higher education is seriously compromised, due to the problems associated with obsolete curricular plans and programs, the deprofessionalization of teachers and the most serious, the desertion of students. The budgets related to education are insufficient, each federal educational institution has a budget assigned according to the number of students enrolled. So, when the student drops out, it directly affects the educational offer in the country. Consequently, tutorial groups at universities are increasingly concerned with the proper management of cognitive factors that affect student academic performance. The foregoing leads to a study of 210 students, starting with a diagnosis of 60 students who have had academic lag to know the perception of the critical cognitive factors that impede academic development; these lagging students are compared to 150 with no academic lag. For this purpose, an emotional intelligence survey was used: Bar-On (2006) with sixty questions that study cognitive perception. An exploratory factor analysis was carried out that allowed reducing the questions, facilitating the interpretation and correlation of factors to validate the instrument.

Two groups were selected:
i) students who lag behind and
ii) students who do not lag behind.

On the other hand, the correlation matrix of the exploratory analysis allows experts to determine the factors that influence student dropout in cognitive dimensions to form the assignment matrix. Through fuzzy cognitive maps and the Hamming distance, it is possible to highlight the critical factors that impede academic development. It was found that students with lag present low levels in three hierarchical dimensions: mood, stress management and adaptability. Also associated with low motivation and inert expressions of feelings of pride in academic successes. It concludes by making a series of suggestions on the significant second-order change that implies the transformation in the work of higher education institutions.

Keywords:

Higher education, lag behind, survey, cognitive maps.