DT 16/20 - Las Tutorías Entre Pares y sus efectos en el desempeño de los estudiantes

Tutorías Entre Pares (TEP) is a program employed with the objective of improving the introduction of freshmen on the university system, without focusing on academic topics. Through several data sets and controlling by demographic and academic background characteristics, propensity score matching methods are employed to investigate if the TEP has effects over academic and non-academic dimensions. The results show that such a program reduces the probability of desertion, a dimension over which the program is expected to act. On the other hand, results over academic variables are found, so that the students enrolled in TEP experience a greater number of courses passed and better grades when compared to similar students that did not enrolled. These results are robust to several matching criteria and to OLS estimations, as well as to different populations. According to these findings, mentoring programs that are meant to improve social dimensions of college students can have positive externalities on academic results, which may be an important point to begin the design of educational policies at college level.