Students in vulnerable situations: current social problem in Dominican higher education

Estudiantes en situación de vulnerabilidad: un problema social actual en la educación superior dominicana

Abstract

Successfully facing the demands of university studies depends on various factors. It is estimated that an important sector of the students of the Autonomic University of Santo Domingo face complex problems, since it is a public university and open to different areas of society. In this sense, the objective of the article is to support the study of the situation of vulnerability that affects university students in Higher Education in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the causes that provoke it and the possibilities of proposing alternative solutions. For such purposes, a thorough bibliographical review and empirical research on the problem were carried out, concluding that student vulnerability influences and determines the university permanence of young people without favorable conditions to study. Indicators of the processes of inequality in the participation in vital social spaces, in the access to goods and services, as well as in the economic distribution were established, sustaining the study in the premise of preventing this situation from its recognition and treatment from the initial and continuous diagnosis, in addition to promoting permanent attention, so that it does not become a predetermined destiny.