Impact of family socioeconomic status on the performance in higher institutions of learning: a case of Makerere University

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between various factors and academic performance of students in high institutions of learning, a case study of school of statistics and planning. Three specific objectives were measured for this research. The study used primary data where 100 students were interviewed using a well-designed and pretested questionnaire. And the analysis was done using STATA 15 software to test for the significance between each independent variable and academic performance. The findings were presented at two levels that is to say univariate analysis and bi-variate analysis using Chi square. The results indicated 20% of the students who were interviewed had a pass class degree and the majority of them were female students (25.5%). In measure of association, academic performance of the students was determined by place of residence, admission points and the background of their former schools by location (p<0.05) and other variable had no influence on the academic performance since the p-value was greater than 0.05. There is need for increase on the access of the university resources such library by students which would enable them to do more research, subsidizing on residence fee so that all students are able to access halls at the university, support and follow up on student`s performance should also be done at the university and even lecturers being strict on the student`s performance.