Motivaciones de los estudiantes universitarios para continuar con su formación académica en programas de posgrado.

Introduction. Education has been consolidated as a strategy to promote the development of knowledge and community vocational training; and the advanced academic degrees as the way to rise the intellectual capital in the society. Objective. Through an exploratory analysis, we try to identify the main undergraduate students motivations to enroll in a graduate program. Methodology. We applied a self-application questionnaire to 728 undergraduate students in the last semesters of their vocational training, at Medellin-Colombia. We explored seven dimensions related to the motivations to study a graduate program. Results. The undergraduate students' motivations to enroll in a graduate program are influenced by academic high level offered and traditional education (non-virtual) methodology of the advanced academic degrees. Conclusions. The Higher Education Institutions have to consider the social context in which they are inmerse, besides their foundational principles, to response effectively to the needed from people to enroll in graduate programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]