Elementos para calcular el costo de oportunidad para estudiar en la Universidad Politécnica de Querétaro (UPQ)

The objective of this research was to calculate the monthly total cost that has a student who enrolls in the Small Business Administration bachelor from the identification and calculation of the opportunity cost in which they occurred. The present study is an educational-descriptive and progressive one, carried out from January to May 2017. The sample consisted of 162 students from a population of 264 who were enrolled in the four-month period January-April 2017. Ninety seven of the participants were women and 65 were men. In order to identify the elements that served to distinguish the economic cost and the accounting cost, a questionnaire was designed and it contained two sections. The amount of time to answer it was20 minutes. The results show that the average monthly of opportunity cost for a student enrolled at Universidad Politecnica de Querétaro is $11,408 pesos; from these expenditures: $3,713 pesos represent explicit or accounting costs and $7, 695 pesos represent implicit costs (this is 54.21 % higher than the monetary costs). Regarding to the explicit costs, in average, just 13.8% is used for the school fee, while 54.21% is designed for transportation, 8% to junk food, and almost 4% to school supplies. Taking into consideration the implicit cost, the total cost for a student is higher than what is normally believed. The above closes the gap between the salaries received by newly graduates and the true cost that their university education has for them. El objetivo de esta investigación fue calcular el costo total mensual que tiene para un alumno estudiar la carrera de Administración y Gestión de Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas, a partir de la identificación y cálculo de los costos de oportunidad en que incurren. El presente es un estudio educativo descriptivo progresivo llevado a cabo de enero a mayo 2017. La muestra se conformó por 162 estudiantes de una población de 264 que se encontraban inscritos en el cuatrimestre enero-abril 2017. Los participantes fueron 97 mujeres y 65 hombres. Para identificar los elementos que sirvieron para distinguir el costo económico y el contable se elaboró un cuestionario que contenía dos secciones. El tiempo aproximado para contestarlo fue de 20 minutos. Los resultados muestran que el costo de oportunidad promedio que tiene para un alumno estudiar en la UPQ fue de $ 11,408 mensuales; de lo anterior, $ 3,713 correspondieron a costos explícitos o contables y $ 7,695 correspondieron a costos implícitos o no monetarios