Peruvian students and self-recognition of their public power: how much influences university education?

• Autor: Stojnic Chávez, Lars
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2016
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/19716
• Enlace del recurso: http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/debatesensociologia/article/view/19716
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: democracy; political attitudes; political efficacy; higher education and educational experience; democracia; actitudes políticas; eficacia política; educación superior y experiencia educativa

Specialized literature associates attitudes considered important to guarantee democratic legitimacy, such as political participation willingness with citizens’ self-recognition of their potential to influence the public sphere. As well, it emphasizes that increasing formal years of study, particularly higher education, as influential on the development of such attitude, also known as internal  political effectiveness.I propose to analyze the educational mechanisms that could explain this relationship; questioning for the Peruvian context if accumulating years in higher education would be enough to understand it. Through multiple regression models, and using the data of a survey applied to Peruvian students from a private university, this article seeks to identify if having more semesters in university would be an influencing factor on higher levels of internal political efficacy or if the experience in a course aimed at challenging students about their citizenship would be more relevant. The results indicate, for the sample selected, that the latest would have a positive and significant effect on their self-recognition as subjects of power from a democratic perspective; unlike the number of accumulated academic semesters.