Continuity versus Desertion in Pandemic Times: The Management of Engineering Schools in a Peruvian Private University via Big-Data Analysis †

Abstract

The main consequence of the arrival of COVID-19 was the application of social distancing, which mainly had implications regarding the economies of affected countries. This affected students, whose economy was weakened because of social restrictions. Therefore, private universities that depend strongly on the continuity of students had to face some difficult periods, with an eventual increase in desertions. In this way, the general managers’ offices had to find new and consistent directions for correct decision making without reducing the quality of the service. This paper presents a scheme that was applied in a private university in the south of Lima city during the period of 2020–2021. It is shown that the usage of a set of variables and their combinations to make a decision only appears to be relevant if a such decision is free of either external or internal noise. The results exhibit a minimization of 70% in the potential number of desertions in 2021 due to the gained experiences of 2020.