Factors associated with the Nutrition students’ academic performance in the Enade exam

Abstract

The student academic performance is multifactorial. There are no studies on the aspects that influence the performance of undergraduate nutrition students in exams such as the National Assessment of Student Performance (Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes – Enade). Thus, this paper aims to verify the relation between the performance of senior nutrition students in Enade with socioeconomic factors, academic history, and the institution’s profile, by the use of secondary data provided by the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira – Inep). It was undertaken a descriptive analysis of the variables and, to establish the factors associated with academic performance, simple and multiple linear regressions (p<0,05) were used. Overall results showed that variables tested in the regression model explained 11.7% of the variability in students’ academic performance. Furthermore, a poorer performance was observed among black students, occasionally working, whose household income did not exceed three Brazilian minimum wages, whose parents had little to no schooling, whose high-school education was completed partially in public and partially in private schools, who had been granted a scholarship or a student loan, and whose college admission was not gained through affirmative action policies. The administrative category of the higher education institution (HEI) was the main factor associated with the performance in Enade. Students who entered college through affirmative action policies outperformed those whose admission were not gained through such policies. It was observed that better elementary and high-school education conditions are essential to ensure equal access to higher education.