Identificación y cierre de Brechas de capital humano en los graduados de pregrado de la Universidad Santo Tomás Seccional Bucaramanga.

Abstract

The development of a country's human capital skills allows for greater productivity, competitiveness and growth. For this reason, and due to the accelerated changes in the world, governmental entities are motivated to evaluate and identify the gaps that exist in the skills of human capital, with a view to improving the aspects of relevance and quality of the same. Given that, in Colombia, it has been identified that there are gaps in terms of the quality and relevance of human capital, this research was conducted with the main objective of identifying the existing human capital gaps in undergraduate graduates of Universidad Santo Tomás Bucaramanga and the strategies that could contribute to closing them. For this purpose, a non-experimental design with three phases of execution was used: 1) characterization of the graduates, the existing gaps and the participants from the business sector. 2) Analysis of the Matrix for the Review of Labor Profiles of the Socioeconomic Observatory of Santander and the Matrix of Competencies and Institutional Profiles of the USTA Bucaramanga and 3) Formulation of strategies to close the gaps. From a total of 25,437 graduates of USTA Bucaramanga, a sample of 665 answered surveys was selected at the discretion of the researcher, exceeding the sample calculated by the proportional sampling distribution formula. It was determined that the majority of USTA graduates quickly enter the labor market practicing the profession they studied, however, their first job does not last more than three years, there is gender inequality, violating women's access to work, fair wages and socioeconomic position. In addition, some academic programs must strengthen the correspondence between the competencies acquired versus those required by the labor market, which are less than 80%. The main conditions that limit rapid access to employment are due to the demands of the labor sector, such as the length of experience (more than two years) and salaries that barely cover the basic needs of graduates. Given the above, four strategies are proposed in order to close these gaps, namely: 1) creation of strategic alliances between USTA-Business-State. 2) Creation of labor incubators by USTA. 3) Restructuring and updating of curricula of programs with a low level of correspondence, and 4) Strengthening of the University - Graduate relationship.