Does attendance affect academic achievement? Empirical evidence from a U.K. Business School.

The objective of this paper is to analyse statistical data for two successive cohorts of undergraduate students over the academic years 2016-17 and 2017-18 in order to assess the impact of their attendance on academic performance. The construction of observations come from students' enrolment on a second year, Economics undergraduate course at a U.K. University. We undertake a regression analysis by Ordinary Least Squares of attendance at seminars and lectures on combined exam and continuous assessment results, which determine overall performance. We extend our analysis by including a 'surrogate' variable that embraces the effect of ability and motivation. Our findings show that the statistical effect of attendance yields a positive, significant effect on academic achievement.