Higher education impact on social mobility of a graduates group from the University of Antioquia

The aim is to present the main results of a study carried out with graduates of the Eastern Section of the University of Antioquia, which had the purpose of assessing the impact that higher education has generated on their life experience. This study contribute data of graduates' life experience that University of Antioquia don't have yet, in spite of three decades of institutional presence. In this study, a non-experimental quantitative research model based on surveys was implemented to measure demographic, socioeconomic, relational, occupational, and cultural variables. The instrument had 84 items about three moments in the life trajectory of 255 graduates: life before entering university, the experience of university training and professional practice. The main conclusion is that higher education made it possible to transform the material and symbolic dimensions of the graduates' social origin and their close groups. The most important contribution of this study is to investigate social mobility from a perspective that includes the economic, cultural and relational characteristics.