Main Article Content

Academic Performance of Less Endowed High School Students in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology


HM Yusif
B Ali

Abstract

This paper investigates the academic performance of students from less endowed senior high schools in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Questionnaires were administered to 152 (123 males and 29 females) fourth year students who enrolled for various programmes at KNUST in 2007 through the less endowed admission policy. The items included in the questionnaires were student characteristics (e.g. age, gender, university entrance score, number of siblings) and parental characteristics (e.g. educational attainments and occupation). We found that 61.8% were high performing students (11.8% first class and 50% second class upper). We also found that among the less endowed socio-economic group, university entrance score had a significant positive influence on their academic performance at 5% level of significance. Again, it was discovered that if parental factors were not controlled for, being male had a significant positive influence on the performance of less endowed students at 5% significance level. These findings have very important policy implications for Ghana, especially policies aimed at improving participation of students from less endowed schools in public universities.

Keywords: Performance, less endowed, student, admission, university


Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 0855-0395