PERCEPTIONS OF THE TUTOR: STUDENT EVASION IN A DISTANCE BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION COURSE

This article is part of the study developed in the Master's in Education Program from the University of Western Sao Paulo State (Universidade do Oeste Paulista), in the Pedagogical Training and Practice of Teachers line of research. Considering that evasion is one of the issues that concerns Higher Education Institutions, this justifies the need for this study, whose objective was to analyze the causes of academic evasion from the Business Administration course in the distance education format of a Higher Education Institutions in northwestern Parana. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted a qualitative-quantitative case study. The instrument used to collect data was a questionnaire with open and multiple choice questions, applied to the Business Administration tutors in the distance education format. The results indicated that the students that dropped out from the distance Business Administration course were in their majority women. With regard to their marital status, we noticed that the majority were single; however, we cannot ignore a high number of married dropouts. The data revealed that the ages of most of the 70% of dropouts was between 18 and 33, and most reside in the state of Parana, we also observed that there is a greater tendency of evasion at the beginning of the course. The tutors feel that the two main reasons refer to student adaptation to the methodology and also financial issues.