Attendance and success: the link between presence and performance in higher education

The effectiveness of higher education is closely linked to students’ academic engagement. This repeated cross-sectional observational study examines the relationship between voluntary lecture attendance and examination performance in a large-enrolment undergraduate course. Over a three-year period, 725 biochemistry students at a sports-oriented faculty were analyzed under consistent teaching conditions. Lecture attendance in this context was not mandatory and was neither incentivized nor formally sanctioned, making participation a matter of individual choice. Attendance data were standardized using Z-score scaling to enable cross-cohort comparability. Spearman correlation analysis revealed a strong positive association between attendance and exam outcomes (ρ ≈ 0.84). All students attending ≥77% of lectures passed the examination on their first attempt, whereas none of those with ≤54% attendance succeeded initially. Approximately 80% of students with 54%–69% attendance eventually passed, indicating a clear empirical threshold effect. While intrinsic motivation was not directly measured, voluntary attendance may serve as a behavioral indicator of academic engagement under conditions of student autonomy. As an observational study, causal inferences cannot be drawn. The findings support the practical use of attendance data as an early-support indicator and inform the conceptual development of an Attendance Alert System aimed at identifying students at risk of academic underperformance.