The university student experience in Latin America: A literature review

Abstract

This review article analyzes alternatives of inquiry, close to sociology, used to understand the student experience at the university. The authors reviewed literature produced in Latin America and supplemented with some texts published in Europe and the United States. Given the diversity of the approaches and the variety of texts, the structure of the article is as follows: it begins with an analysis of works that are taken as theoretical and methodological references, then the authors address texts dealing with the activities developed by the students, the spaces they build or where they participate, and the links they generate as they go through the university. In numerous investigations on student experience, the authors deal with dimensions linked to the educational process and leave aside the students' relationships with groups, facts, situations or problems which are frequent in their countries. In these contexts, people take alternate routes to develop their training process, seeking resources that allow them to continue, as well as tools to understand, or modify, their individual condition in conflictive social environments. In this struggle, people undergo a series of transformations that are evident in the student experience.