Examining the factors that determine the academic performance of university undergraduate students at CoBAMS that benefit from The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at Makerere University

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to examine the different factors that determine the academic performance of the CoBAMS students benefiting from the MasterCard foundation scholars at Makerere University. The assessment was done basing on the students’ mode of registration/program, gender, number of course units on the first semester of the academic year 2018/19, and involvement in sports, formal employment, business ventures, leadership/politics and dating relationships using primary data collected from the sample of 71 CoBAMS students benefiting from the MasterCard foundation scholars program at Makerere university. The analysis was done at two levels of univariate and bivariate. Frequency distribution tables and summary statistics were done at the univariate level, and ANOVA at bivariate level to test the relationship between GPA and the rest of variables, and the p-value used to test the significance of the relationships. According to the results, majority of the students were female (79%), and most of the students were registered on day program (69), average GPA was 3.56 which indicated a fairly good performance, and the average number of course units was 7. At bi-variate level, the study shows a significant relationship between GPA and mode of registration/program (p<0.05). students’ gender, number of course units, engagement in dating relationships, sports, leadership, formal employment and business ventures were not found to significantly determine academic performance (p>0.05, for all of them). In conclusion, only one hypothesis was rejected. This implies that there is a significant relationship between GPA and student’s mode of registration/program.