Research studies on degree completion on due time are seldom in the higher education literature. Regarding the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), no study has been published so far addressing the topic of degree completion on due time (Yes/No) based on nationwide representative data. By considering an entire entrant cohort of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who attended their three-year program at the same institution, and that simultaneously considers students’ background, entrance scores and choices, eligibility for social scholarship, institutional organization characteristics and the area of study, this study explores the role of social scholarships/financial aid in overcoming the effects of students’ socioeconomic disadvantages. A previous study (Ferrão, 2023) analyzed the relationship of the aforementioned students’ characteristics on degree completion grade point average (GPA). Findings suggest that receiving (or not receiving) a social scholarship has no influence on students’ GPA, confirming recent institution research findings obtained with the Universidade of Minho data (Ferrão et al., 2021) for  the 1^st year GPA rating. Nevertheless, Ferrão et al. (2020) found a statistically significant fixed effect of scholarship on students’ persistence, at the level of significance of 10%. In addition, institutional research conducted at the Instituto Politécnico de Leiria points out that providing solutions for financial limitations may contribute to decrease the risk of dropping out. In fact, Carreira and Lopes (2021) report that the “main motives for dropping out referred were ‘financial difficulties’ (27% of the students) and ‘work-school incompatibility’ (20%), while ‘low academic performance’ (11%), ‘health reasons’ (8%) or migration (2%), for example, were less mentioned, confirming the importance of financial assistance to reduce dropout risk (for traditional students) […]” (p. 1353). Given that the financing of higher education in Portugal has progressively shifted from the state’s responsibility to that of the students' and their families, as in many other countries (Marginson, 2018; Tight, 2020), this calls for a more accountable evaluation of private/public funding and demands more effective social justice policies (Pitman et al., 2019). Thus, this study investigates the effect of receiving social scholarships/financial aid on degree completion on due time. Its specific objective is to estimate the fixed effect of receiving or not receiving a social scholarship on the probability of degree completion on due time. The study contributes to the themes of students’ success (degree completion), equity (financial aid), system evaluation and resource allocation. Since Portugal is one of the European countries where the costs of higher education are supported primarily by taxpayers, this topic of research matters not only for public policy regarding the increase of equity, but also for the efficiency of public resources allocation.

The population under study consists of students who entered undergraduate programs of 180 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) by the national competition and who obtained (or not) their diploma three years later. The survey “Register of students enrolled in and graduated from higher education” (RAIDES) was used. The administrative RAIDES data (DGEEC - Direção-Geral de Estatísticas da Educação e Ciência, 2020), primarily collected for official statistics, offer great potential for secondary analyses such as quantitative based scientific research. The survey RAIDES is annually carried out in Portugal within the scope of the National Statistical System which is mandatory. Data were collected by higher education institutions and exported in XML format to the DGEEC twice a year (January and April; December 31 and March 31 as time reference, respectively), throughout the “Plataforma de Recolha de Informação do Ensino Superior” [Platform of Data Collection in Higher Education] (PRIES). Details on data collection, data processing and information about the agreement for data privacy protection may be found in previous studies such as Ferrão (2023) or Ferrão et al. (2022). For the purpose of this study, students’ data enrolled in the academic year 2013–14 and graduates’ data in the academic year 2016–17 were paired. Records of students who were not enrolled in their 1st year for the first time or whose access to higher education was different from the national competition are not considered. Random coefficient models are well grounded in the literature on higher education and success measurement. In this study, multilevel logistic models are applied considering two hierarchical structures at two levels with dependent variable representing degree completion on due time (DC, Yes/No). Preliminary results were obtained with the statistical computing software MLwiN (Rasbash et al., 2017), and the estimation procedure was the penalized quasi-likelihood of second order, PQL2 (Goldstein & Rasbash, 1996).

Preliminary results show that, at the level of 5%, there is a statistically significant fixed effect of receiving a social scholarship on degree completion on time. The magnitude of the fixed effect depends on the set of controlling variables in the model. The odds ratio varies from 1.2 to 1.5. Other independent or controlling variables included in the linear predictor of the model are as follows: Entrance score, 1st choice programme-institution, gender, age at enrollment, parents’ education, area of study, non-local institution attended, type of institution, interaction between age and entrance score.

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