THE IMPACT OF HOME TO UNIVERSITY CAMPUS TRAVEL TIME ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: A PARTICULAR CASE
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led universities to implement online classes in 2020 and 2021, but they returned to classroom-based classes in 2022. This research aims to empirically examine the impact of home to university campus travel time on student academic performance in the School of Social and Economic Sciences at Universidad del Valle. To this end, a survey was conducted among 102 students in this School, and a difference-in-differences model was estimated using the collected data. The treatment group corresponds to students with a travel time greater than 20 minutes from home to the university. Results suggest that a 1% increase in travel time decreases 0.022% of students' academic performance. Two potential mechanisms explaining this effect are student gender and means of transportation: a 1% travel time increase results in a differential decrease of 0.046% in academic performance for those who use private transportation compared to those who use public transportation; likewise, a 1% travel time increase produces a differential negative impact of 0.039% on academic performance for men compared to women. This result is explained by the fact that men use private transportation more than women.
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