Covid-19 and education: a study with undergraduate students

The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities and schools worldwide to switch from in-person to online learning. This article analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, particularly on the academic performance of undergraduate students in Brazil. The sudden shift from face-to-face to online learning, caused by government measures to contain the spread of the virus, provided an opportunity to investigate the effects of this change on academic outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences methodology and a unique and granular dataset, we find that the transition negatively affected students’ academic performance, increasing the course failure rates. We also investigate the heterogeneous effects of the abrupt change across student subgroups and find that older students adapted more quickly than younger students, while the change disproportionately affected female students and those with lower academic skills. The study emphasizes the need for targeted interventions to support groups that struggled more with the shift to ensure all students have an equal opportunity to succeed in the new online environment.