Influência do plano nacional de assistência estudantil sobre indicadores de desempenho acadêmico, evasão e retenção dos discentes cotistas no período da pandemia de Covid-19 na UFPB

Abstract

Student assistance programs are part of the public policies for social inclusion through education, as decisive actions to promote equity for students in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability in higher education institutions (HEI). The crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had an intense impact on the way people learn, work, and live. In this sense, educational policies of student assistance are effective in guaranteeing human rights and contribute to the improvement of academic performance and school permanence which, in turn, are measured by indicators that represent important parameters for the reorientation of public policies themselves, and these must be constantly monitored and evaluated in the HEIs. The present research had the general objective of evaluating the influence of the National Student Assistance Plan (PNAES) on variables used to measure academic performance indicators, dropout and retention of assisted quota-earning students, during the atypical school periods after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB). Specifically, it aimed to describe the socioeconomic profile of quota students assisted by PNAES, compare the variables of academic performance indicators, retention and dropout among quota students assisted and not assisted by PNAES in the academic periods prior to the beginning of the pandemic (2018.2 to 2019.2) and during the atypical academic periods in the pandemic (2020.1 to 2021.1) and correlate variables of the socioeconomic profile with those of the academic profile. As for the methodological procedures, this study is characterized as documental, cencus, retrospective and of quantitative approach, from databases of the Pro-Rectory of Assistance and Promotion to Students (PRAPE) and Pro-Rectory of Graduation (PRG) of UFPB. The population of this research comprises the students of in-class undergraduate courses at UFPB, entering through the quota system, and who present the status of active enrollment, locked or cancelled, in the institution's database, between the academic periods from 2018.2 to 2021.1. The variables studied were: academic performance coefficient, number of failures in disciplines, enrollment status, number of academic periods remaining for the completion of the course, as well as variables related to the socioeconomic profile of students. The data analysis was descriptive statistics and the impact evaluation technique of public policies called differences in differences (DD). Therefore, considering the disparity of the results found in the analyzes and in the comparisons between the two groups of the population, and that these results were favorable to the group of assisted students, in part of the variables, it is assumed that the program was partially effective, positively influencing the variables analyzed, with the exception of the variables coefficient of academic performance (CRA) and "number of periods above the regular period for completing the course.