Uncovering the Factors for University Student Retention During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Exploring the Adoption of M-Learning Technologies in Bolivia

Retaining university studentsUniversity students is a challenge for educational institutions in Bolivia. The closure of universities due to the COVID-19COVID-19 pandemicPandemic forced educational institutionsEducational institutions to changeChange to online educationOnline education. This change brings students new academic, technological, economic, and social challengesChallenge. In particular, online educationOnline education leads to less socialization among studentsStudents, their professors, and intellectual peers and more focus on the results of the educational service. Additionally, the pandemic caused economic problems in all countries; consequently, the student's incomes were affected, compromising their ability to pay for their studies. All of this suggested that Bolivia's pandemic and online educationOnline education reduced the importance of socialization in universitiesUniversities and increased educational technology'sTechnology role and the economic environment in student retention. Based on data collected during the lockdownLockdown and the student dropout model proposed by (Bean and Metzner, Review of Educational Research 55:485–540, 1985), we found that student retention in Bolivia depends on student background, academic variables, quality of the university's educational services, environmental variables, social integration variables, and psychological consequences. In a follow-up study, we analyzed the adoption of online education technologies in university studentsUniversity students, with particular emphasis on m-learning. Understanding the factors that lead to adopting technologies such as m-learning can help Bolivian university authorities develop strategiesStrategies for implementing online educationOnline education. Our results suggest that user satisfaction with online educationOnline education depends on the platform's ease of use. Moreover, our results indicate that the success of implementing technological solutions for distance learningDistance learning is not universal but contingent upon studentsStudents’ characteristics. In conclusion, enhancing student retention rates and fostering a valuable and fulfilling learning environment are areas where Bolivian universities have ample room for improvement. The continued dedication of educational institutions to these endeavors plays a pivotal role in securing their students’ long-lasting achievement and contentment during the current and future pandemics.