FACTORS INFLUENCING UNIVERSITY FRESHMEN DROPOUT: A DATA-BASED STUDY FOR FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF RECÔNCAVO DA BAHIA

ABSTRACT

University dropout has been the subject of intense research for it incurs social, academic, and economic losses. In this work, we investigate factors that affect freshman dropout rates in the context of Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. To this end, we make use of a dataset that comprises 19,452 freshmen admitted by Sistema de Seleção Unificada between 2010 and 2019 from 43 undergraduate courses. We aim at identifying associations between dropout rates and five freshmen factors: gender, age at admission, admission via quota, hometown, and Sistema de Seleção Unificada edition. To this end, we carry out exploratory data analysis and fit simple and multiple logistic regression models for each department as well as for the aggregate data. We conclude that each department has a distinct set of factors associated with dropout, requiring the adoption of policies to reduce dropout rates focused on the identified particularities.

KEYWORDS
higher education; dropout; factors; logistic regression