Abstract:

The behavior of university students in the face of their academic performance, over time, can be diverse. When studying the phenomenon of academic performance, it is fundamental and practical to analyze two vectors: the initial push or initial academic performance and the adjustment of academic performance over time. Balancing in time was considered because students can have inertial behavior that generates few stimuli or that these are irrelevant. The study consisted of taking the quantitative results of 12521 university students, enrolled consecutively in four academic periods and determining how their current academic performance had changed, in consideration of their initial academic performance and the inertia of the results over time. Based on the theoretical analysis proposed and the statistical and econometric techniques used, we conclude that the student tends to maintain an inertial behavior, with performance, relatively constant over time. The results obtained show that the student's behavior is determined by the information provided by his own academic history.

It is fundamental to take care of the academic performance with which the university students start, this "factor" will establish the future or long-term behavior, and even, it will determine the permanence of the students in the career. The student who starts relatively well has enough confidence to be able to progress in his studies; It is undeniable that, the academic self-concept (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016) of the students improves from the past results, mainly the initials. The initial academic performance helps mitigate the movements of academic performance over time, so that the combination, initial results and stability in the movements of academic performance over time, ensure that a student can have and maintain a performance academic that allows him to progress successfully in his studies.

The inertial behavior, in the investigation, was evidenced in several moments, 67.34% of the studied cases tend to maintain the results in time, independently of what was their level of initial academic performance, this fact was confirmed with the econometric modeling that determined that current academic performance and perhaps the future is positively affected by initial academic performance and inertia; all this, respecting the decisions, responsible or not, that the individual can take about their level of effort to improve or maintain their academic performance.

The natural habitat of students, compared to academic performance, is inertia; the accommodation to the initial results are evident in the fact that the initial academic performance has negative effects on the probability that a student, over time, will have results greater than or equal to the initial ones, compared to having lower results; In less complex words, the student tends to lower their results but remains in a fairly comfortable area, the minimum to pass. It is evident - in the multinomial probability model - with the positive indicator of inertia and the negative of the initial performance, that the student tries not to lose, but with the minimum possible effort, he conforms to a certain level and moves in the area his Inertial behavior suggests, in this case and adjusting to those reviewing in the literature, the stimulation of better results is irrelevant, minimizing all the benefits that could bring the fact of having a better academic performance.

Keywords:

Behavior, academic performance, imitation, university.