A Dissertation Submitted to Mzumbe University in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Award of Master of Public Administration (MPA) of
Mzumbe University
Academic performance is an area of concern for all academic programs in higher
learning institutions in Tanzania. Universities and other higher learning institutions
strive to be centers of excellence in knowledge and skills generation among students. In
view of this, conditions and factors leading to better students’ academic performance
prior and after joining these institutions become crucial.
Literature has documented several factors that affect academic performance in various
centers of learning. These factors are inside and outside the University. The factors may
be termed as demographic, Socio Economic Status and learning environment. Before
admission at universities (Ardhi University inclusive) a number of administrative data
are collected from the students. Though these data are collected, the direct relationship
between these data and academic performance is not known. This study was conducted
to reduce this research gap.
Both primary and secondary data were used. Data were collected from a randomly
selected sample of 543 Ardhi University students. The academic performance was
gauged using General Performance Aggregate (GPA) based on the 2011/12 academic
year examination results. Explanatory factors selected included demographic aspects,
occupation of parent/guardian, mode of entry, learning environment and academic
performance in O’ and A’ levels. SPSS was applied for data analysis.
The key finding indicates that the most important predictors of performance in
examination at Ardhi University were Age, marital status, residence status, class size,
and previous academic performance mostly the performance obtained at ordinary levels.
The study recommends that Policy makers should maintain to make policy that
encourages children to start basic education at early ages. Universities should solicit
fund for the provision of campus accommodations,. Universities admission criteria of
students should pay much attention to the performance obtained at O’ level. Higher
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