An interdisciplinary team from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico will use explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to predict and prevent student dropout in higher education. Funded by the HUC Seed Fund, the project will compare critical variables in three Latin American contexts, generating predictive models and visual tools for mentorship and tutoring programs.
Researchers from Universidad Austral (Argentina), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile will develop one of the ten projects associated with the Hemispheric University Consortium (HUC) Seed Fund. This initiative will investigate the risk of university dropout through explainable AI (XAI), aiming to predict which students are at risk of abandoning their studies.
The project will be carried out in several stages during the fund’s execution. First, historical data from the three participating universities will be collected and cleaned, including variables related to regular students and those requiring academic support, as defined by each institution. The next phase will focus on training predictive AI models for each university using XAI techniques to improve understanding of dropout risks and their underlying causes.
Once the models are developed, the team will extract interpretable explanations at individual and institutional levels. These insights will help identify similarities or differences in dropout patterns among the three universities. This will facilitate the creation of practical tools for internal use at each institution, as well as policy recommendations adaptable to their specific educational contexts.
Regarding the challenges addressed by this research, Dr. Isabel Hilliger, an academic from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, emphasized: “Student dropout is a persistent issue amid the expansion of higher education coverage in the region. It has profound repercussions for individuals and their social mobility.”
Research Team
The team leading this project includes:
Dr. Héctor Gibran Ceballos Cancino
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Director of the IFE Living Lab & Data Hub
Dr. Isabel Hilliger Carrasco
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Assistant Professor and Director of the Design Engineering Unit (DILAB)
Dr. Julio Cesar Durand
Universidad Austral
Professor and Director of the Interinstitutional Doctoral Program in Higher Education (UA-UAI-UNRN)
Dr. Juan Andrés Talamás Carvaja
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Research Assistant at the Living Lab & Data Hub and XAI expert
Yliana Mogollón
Universidad Austral
Master’s candidate in Data Science and systems analyst and ICT specialist.
Objectives and Expected Outcomes
Using specialized algorithms, the system will analyze academic and socio-educational data from the three universities to identify dropout-related patterns. The research aims to anticipate risk scenarios while generating interpretable explanations for dropout factors, both locally (within each university) and regionally. A primary goal is to support mentors and tutors in designing personalized interventions tailored to at-risk students, aligned with each institution’s reality.
Funded by the HUC—a consortium of 13 leading universities across the Americas—the project will compare how dropout factors vary between countries, creating tools adaptable to diverse educational settings.
For Dr. Héctor Ceballos of Tecnológico de Monterrey, the project’s significance lies in its outcomes: “We expect to develop early prediction models for each participating institution, visualizations of local and institutional explanations for mentors, and comparative reports on dropout trends in Latin America”.
About the HUC Seed Fund
The HUC Seed Fund is an initiative designed to promote collaborative research among consortium members, aiming to generate innovative solutions to key social challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2024, ten projects were selected, involving researchers from multiple universities and addressing the consortium’s priority areas.
Dr. Julio Cesar Durand of Universidad Austral highlighted the fund’s impact: “This seed grant will cover expenses associated with hiring expert researchers, collaborative travel, and disseminating the project’s results”.
HUC Member Institutions
The consortium includes: Universidad Austral (Argentina), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil), York University (Canada), The University of the West Indies (Caribbean), Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), Universidad de Costa Rica (Costa Rica), Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador), Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Perú), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile), University of Miami (USA) & Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre Maestra (Dominican Republic).
