An Analysis of the Factors that determine course unit retakes in Makerere University

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that determine undergraduate students acquisition of course unit retakes at SSP. The assessment was made on characteristics of students’ abilities and behavior, characteristics of tertiary education systems & institutions, parental background and family background and labor market conditions using primary data source from school of statistics and planning at Makerere University using a sample of 120students.The analysis was made at three different levels that is; frequency distribution and summary of statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients, ANOVA and the multiple linear regression. The research results show that most of the students (70.83%) were between 18 –23 years. Majority of the students were single (96.67%) in terms of marital status. Students were falling between two programs where most of them were from the day program (71.67%). The majority of the students were Ugandans (94.17%) and most of the students A LEVEL secondary school was private (68.33%).majority of the students were privately sponsored students (80.83%), most of the students have never sought for counselling (62.5%).the majority of the students were unemployed (80%) and the employed were part timing (83.33%) with most of them on salaried employment (54.17%).majority of the students had retakes by their second semester of 3rd or final year (65.83%).From the bivariate analysis, it shows that there is significant relation between the variables of program of study, type of sponsorship and parents or guardian’s occupations since they were dependent with the retakes (p<0.05), while the rest of the variables were independent to course unit retakes. The result of the regression implies that type of sponsorship amongst the variables is positively and significantly correlated with the dependent variable (retakes), since their P values was less than 0.05 (P < 0.05). According to this study findings, two of the four hypothesis were rejected and this implies that there is a positive relationship between course unit retakes and the two explanatory factors of characteristics of tertiary systems & institutions and parents family background, hence they significantly influence course retakes during the years of course completion. On the other hand hypothesis on students’ characteristics and labor market conditions were accepted, implying that there is negative relationship between course unit retakes and the explanatory factors of characteristics of students, abilities & behavior and the labor market conditions. The study recommends improvement in the administration of the lecturing to the students and urged the parents to get involved in the academic performance of their children to reduce the retakes.