STUDENTS' TRAJECTORIES THROUGH HIGHER EDUCATION: A LITERATURE REVIEW

The objective of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of educational formation at the level of Higher Education, based on a literature review on the academic trajectories of students entering undergraduate and graduate courses. For this purpose, searches were carried out on three different platforms: (a) on Google Scholar; (b) on the Periodicals Portal of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES); and (c) at the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). The main selection criterion was the content to deal centrally with the theme of academic trajectories in Higher Education, containing in the title, abstract or keywords of the publications one or more of the search terms used. The bibliographical survey resulted in 42 selected works. The review of these works identified two main strands of research: (i) those in which the investigation of trajectories takes place centrally from the perspective of the performance of educational systems, and (ii) those whose central theme is the investigation of trajectories under the perspective of students' social and/or socioeconomic origins. The analysis carried out suggests that the study about the academic pathways can provide relevant subsidies for a broader understanding of the teaching systems and the training process in undergraduate and graduate programs, with regard to the effectiveness in the production of graduates and the level of equity that is present in access, permanence and completion at different levels of training.