Evasão acadêmica no curso de ciências contábeis: um estudo sobre o perfil socioeconômico e sua relação com a evasão

Abstract

In recent decades, higher education in Brazil has undergone significant expansion. However, course completion has not kept pace with this growth, revealing high dropout rates and causing social, academic, and economic losses. Public policies, such as the Unified Selection System (SISU), have expanded access to public universities; however, they cannot be solely held responsible for the increase in dropout rates. The aim was to identify patterns in the causes of dropout, correlating them with students’ profiles in order to provide data for institutional policies that promote academic retention. The analysis revealed that dropout is a multifactorial phenomenon, influenced by institutional, academic, and socioeconomic factors of students, as well as by the management policies of institutions. Public policies, such as SISU, did not prove to be determining factors on their own, but rather in conjunction with the factors already mentioned, indicating that academic dropout cannot be analyzed from a single perspective but from the totality of events that lead to it. This study adopted a qualitative and descriptive methodology, conducting semi-structured interviews with former students of the Accounting Sciences program at the Federal University of Uberlândia who dropped out between 2014 and 2024. The results point to the need for more comprehensive institutional strategies, including curriculum revision aligned with the private labor market, flexible scheduling, expansion of course and subject offerings in remote or hybrid formats, strengthening of academic and psychological support, and the implementation of active listening channels between students, faculty, and administration.