Adaptation, performance, evasion and academic experiences in higher education: literature review

Abstract The beginning of academic life is a period of great change for the student, who is often childishly treated in high school and faces the university's responsibilities and demands. The present work had the objective to review articles, published between 2005 and 2015, regarding the university adaptation related to the academic experiences, income and evasion, in the Engineering course. For that, research was carried out in the following electronic databases: Virtual Health Library (VHL), Scielo Brazil and Portal of Electronic Periodicals of Psychology (PePSIC). The following descriptors were used: academic adaptation, academic experiences, academic achievement, avoidance and engineering. We found 55 articles, but only 16 met the inclusion criteria. Most of the related empirical articles (66.7%) use the Questionnaire of Academic Experiences (QVA) or Questionnaire of Academic Experiences - reduced version (QVA-r). Two of them (13.3%) used this instrument together with the Social Skills Inventory and another three (20.0%) with the Student Characterization Questionnaire. It is concluded that interpersonal relationships can favor academic achievement and delay evasion, as well as student support services; and the shortage of the subject in the courses of engineering was verified.