Abstract:

This work aims to describe the results of the institutional revision of the Bachelor’s degree in Public Management and Administration (PMA) at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) in Castellón, Spain, performed by the PMA Degree Board of Management, covering the whole degree life, from the academic year 2012/2013 to the past 2021/2022, and comparing different environment conditions between the periods COVIT pre-pandemia (2012 to 2019, normalized teaching development), COVIT pandemia (2020 to 2021; strict and partial quarantine, online teaching), and COVIT post-pandemia (2021 to 2022, recovering the normalized teaching development).

In the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, the Spanish government ordered an strict quarantine for the whole country, but allowing industrial, professional and educational activities only as online or telecommuting. The Spanish universities had to move to online teaching and re-organizing the corresponding rules about alumni participation in classes from home. In the first semester of the 2020-2021 academic year, under a partial quarantine situation, more than 50% of alumni had to keep following classes from home, and the rest could go to the campus. This was organized as rotating shifts by thirds. In the first month of the second semester, we go back to a new strict quarantine period. And the rest of semester was developed similarly to the first semester. During this whole period, the teaching organization guidelines, issued by the national and regional authorities, were adapted as the situation evolved, reducing the health risk. In the 2021-2022 academic year, the 100% of the teaching taught in person was recovered as well as the academic normal development. But the PMA Degree Board of Management, collecting complaints and notices from teachers, detected that not everything was the same as before and that something was not working well.

In the case of PMA, the disruption of the ordinary dynamics of the degree, caused by the COVID-19 quarantines, was reinforced because, precisely in the 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, the grade was migrating to the morning slot of the class schedule. Although the rate of new enrollments has been increasing, in this period a collateral phenomenon has been observed: the continued absenteeism of a considerable part of the enrolled students. And the student’s dropout rate was dramatically increased over 30% after the first academic year (semesters 1st and 2nd). Although this phenomenon has occurred in other grades, in the case of PAM it has been accentuated.

Since the authors are members of the PMA Degree Board of Management, they have had full access to the necessary data about the above-described situations, and the corresponding management competencies for obtaining conclusions and applying the enhancement academic initiatives. The fundamental purpose is to verify that the academic viability of PMA is guaranteed and that positive results may be presented in the next official re-accreditation process.

Keywords:

Impact in teaching dynamics after Covid-19, massive absence in classrooms, delayed disturbances in the degree, transition evening to morning class shifts.