Gone with the pandemic: 5 myths about Argentine university education

Abstract

During 2020 the educational activity as a whole has been transformed. The context of the health emergency forced the Argentine university system to quickly adapt to an unknown and uncertain reality. In this area, the epidemiological situation had a full impact on norms, customs, and traditions, but it also challenged many of the current myths in university education.
The objective of this research was to know what happened in Argentine universities throughout the country in 2020 from the perspective of their protagonists (management teams and teachers) and to evaluate whether some of the current myths about management, distance education and university teaching still stand after such experience. Among the results, autonomous management models with open doors stand out (which recognized the authority of the executive branch and respected its guidelines); ability to reach consensus in record time and make changes that were unexpected until a couple of years ago; a higher positive assessment of distance education based on lived experience; a technological floor from which teachers can grow; a hierarchization of pedagogy and a greater consensus on the need to train university professors as teachers.