Avaliação da eficácia do Programa de Iniciação Acadêmica da Universidade Federal do Ceará: permanência, desempenho e êxito estudantil

Abstract

The Federal University of Ceará's Student Assistance Program has as its main objective the execution of support actions towards undergraduate students that present proven socioeconomic vulnerability, in a manner that contribute to their permanence in the institution, to their academic performance and to a timely conclusion of their respective courses. The aforementioned program offers students of the institution some benefits - among which the Academic Initiation Scholarship, Bolsa de Iniciação Acadêmica(BIA), stands out - aimed specifically at students of the initial semesters, it has as objective providing financial conditions in order to ensure their permanence and satisfactory academic performance. Currently, it offers 1.500 scholarships annually, benefiting the students from all the institution’s campuses. Given the importance of the evaluation of public educational policies and the necessity to verify the application of public resources’ efficiency, this research has as a general objective: to evaluate the effectiveness of the Federal University of Ceará’s BIA program regarding the achievement of its objectives to ensure permanency, course conclusion in standard time and academic performance of the students benefited by this student assistance grant. To carry out the research, typified as exploratory and descriptive, a structured questionnaire was applied to the referred program’s students, in the period of 2013 to 2017. The data was collected on-line, having sent 3862 questionnaires, extracting from those the sample of 579 participants. In addition, data from the institution’s Academic Activities Management Integrated System, Sistema Integrado de Gestão de Atividades Acadêmicas (SIGAA), The results show the influence that being awarded with the scholarship have on the permanence rates, academic performance and course completion rates of the benefited students. It is concluded that the BIA program fulfills the objectives it proposes to, contributing directly to the reduction of evasion at Federal University of Ceará, to the satisfactory academic performance and to the course conclusion of students benefited by the public educational policy. This ratifies the importance of the continued investments in the assistance of Brazilian higher education students made possible by PNAES.