The effect of class assignment on academic performance and labor market: Evidence from public federal university in Brazil

Abstract

Can students' rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement ? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian university. The rule means that in almost 30 per cent of its courses, the Federal University of Bahia allocates 50 per cent of the best students in the university entrance exam to the group that starts in the first semester, and the other 50 per cent to the group that starts in the second semester. We also explore the fact that the Federal University of Bahia was the first federal university in Brazil to adopt affirmative action for low-income individuals. In general, the results indicate that coming last among the best students of the first class negatively impacts student performance, and this effect is greater when considering students from affirmative action programmes and for courses in the field of technology. But the results in the labour market are not unique. Being in the first class could have positive or negative effects in terms of the labour market, depending on whether the students are part of the affirmative action quota or not.

Peer effects in college: how peers' performance can influence students' academic outcomes

“…These findings are in line with the other studies that used data from other Brazilian public universities, in particular, Ribas et al (2020), Motte and Oliveira (2020) and André (2016). UFMG is a flagship Brazilian university and our sample comprised more than 58,000 students admitted to the university between years 1995 and 2013.…”

“…According to our findings, joining a class with high-ability students damages academic achievements of the lowest-ability students at UFMG. This general result is in line with what was found in empirical studies based on other Brazilian universities (Ribas et al 2020;Motte and Oliveira, 2020). However, we found some results not yet reported in the literature in terms of gender differences in academic behaviors.…”

“…In spite of the relevance of the subject, research exploring peer effects on student achievement in developing countries is extremely scarce (Asadullah and Chaudhury, 2008;Soetevent, 2006). In the case of Brazil, there are a few studies estimating the effects of peers in university environments (Poldin et al, 2015;André, 2016;Ribas et al, 2020;Motte and Oliveira, 2020) which reinforces the importance and contemporaneity of this research topic.…”

“…The empirical approach used by André (2016), Ribas et al (2020) and Motte and Oliveira (2020) is very similar to the one used in this paper. André (2016) also estimated peer effects on academic performance of undergraduate students enrolled in 2008 at an important university in Brazil (the Universidade Federal do Ceará) employing a similar natural experiment to ours in a regression discontinuity approach.…”

“…For that matter, they used several different performance indicators: first midterm grade, standardized course grade, GPA, failure by grade and by attendance, number of courses taken, missed first midterm and number of absences. Finally, Motte and Oliveira (2020) also exploited a discontinuity caused by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at another Brazilian university (Universidade Federal da Bahia) to estimate peers effects. They found that having the lowest performance among the best students of the class negatively affects ones' performance, especially for students from affirmative action programmes and for technology courses.…”