In virtual education, student autonomy manifests as operational self-regulation, and critical thinking depends on isolated pedagogical practices, which highlights the need to analyze the pedagogical, technological, and institutional mediations that shape critical autonomy. The objective was to analyze how the formation of critical subjects and autonomy in higher-education virtual environments is configured, based on students’ experiences at three universities in Peru, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. A qualitative approach was adopted, using a multiple and comparative case study design. The purposive and voluntary sample consisted of 18 university students aged 18 to 25, evenly distributed between semi-structured interviews and focus groups, and content analysis of the institutional virtual platform was conducted in each context. The findings show that, across the three cases, opera...