RT book part
T1 Teaching in mass higher education rising student diversity and pedagogical implications (1960–2024)
A1 Muñoz-Perez, Juan J.
A1 Contreras de Villar, Antonio
A1 Jigena Antelo, Bismarck
A1 Contreras de Villar, Francisco
A1 López García, Patricia
A2 Ciencias y Técnicas de la Navegación y Construcciones Navales
A2 Física Aplicada
A2 Ingeniería Industrial e Ingeniería Civil
K1 Mass higher education
K1 teaching quality
K1 academic heterogeneity
K1 long-term statistical evidence
K1 instructional diversity
K1 university pedagogy
AB The transformation of higher education from an elite to a mass system over the past six decades hasprofoundly altered the conditions under which teaching quality is pursued in university classrooms. Whileprevious studies have examined institutional, social, and pedagogical drivers of this process, this studyoffers a complementary perspective based on a simplified statistical framework to explore changes inthe academic heterogeneity of university cohorts. Using official data from the Spanish National Instituteof Statistics, the analysis examines the evolution of university participation among young people aged18–24 between 1960 and 2024. The model relates observed enrollment rates to an abstract, normallydistributed scale of academic preparedness, employed solely as a theoretical construct to representrelative entry thresholds rather than as a direct measure of individual ability. Within this framework,university access is interpreted as historically constrained by structural and capacity limitations, whichimplicitly selected narrower segments of the student population. This model does not provide a directempirical measure of individual ability, but rather a simplified theoretical construct intended to explorestructural trends in access to higher education. As participation rates increase, the implied entrythreshold shifts, indicating a progressive broadening of the range of academic preparedness present inuniversity classrooms.The results document an unprecedented expansion of Spanish higher education, with enrollment ratesrising from approximately 5% in 1960 to nearly 50% in recent decades, alongside a tenfold increase intotal student numbers. From an educational perspective, this transformation suggests growing instructionaldiversity and increased demands on teaching methodologies, assessment strategies, and academicsupport systems. These findings highlight the need for adaptive pedagogical approaches capable ofaddressing heterogeneous learning profiles while continuing to support academically high-performingstudents within mass higher education systems. The study contributes to ongoing discussions on teachingquality by providing a long-term, data-informed perspective on structural changes affecting universityclassrooms.
PB IATED
SN 978-84-09-88444-5
SN 2340-1117
YR 2026
FD 2026-07-01
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/40113
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/40113
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 07-nov-2026