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This study examined predictors of cumulative grade point average (GPA) from entrance scores and successive performance during students' academic work in university engineering programs.

Scores from high school coursework, the General Ability Test and the Achievement Test were examined to determine if these factors and annual successive GPAs were predictors of long-term GPA. The sample consisted of 2,031 students registered in university engineering programs during the 2013–2019 period.

Correlations were significant between entrance scores and the preparatory year GPA but not with cumulative GPA. Also, correlations were significant between year-1 GPA to year-3 GPA and the graduation GPA. Adjacent year GPA is the better predictor of later GPA. More importantly, GPA at the time of graduation is well predicted by GPAs throughout years of study within engineering programs after controlling for entrance scores. Girls outperform boys in their entrance scores and GPAs. Hence, girls are likely to obtain higher cumulative GPAs.

The implications of the study findings could help university faculty and administrators to understand the role of current entrance scores in predicting academic achievement of engineering students. In addition, the results could serve as a foundation to review weights of entrance scores for future developments and revisions. The findings of the study are limited to admission data for engineering students during the 2013–2019 period. Other disciplines may show a different pattern of relationships among the studied variables.

The study findings have useful practical implications for admitting and monitoring student progress at engineering education programs. Results may help program curriculum development specialists and committees in designing admission criteria.

Administrators and faculty members are advised to consider entrance scores when providing counseling and monitoring throughout students' program-year progress. More attention should be devoted to university performance when interest is focused on later or graduation CGPA, with less emphasis on entrance scores.

The existed previous studies explored factors that influence the student performance in engineering programs. This study documents the role of admission criteria and successive GPAs in predicting the student graduation CGPA in engineering programs. Relationships between factors are crucial for engineering program revisions and policymaking.

The purpose of this study is to determine the undergraduate students' performance in the Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya and the factors influencing the performance of the undergraduate students.

The performance of the undergraduate students in this study is measured by their cumulative grade point average (CGPA) in the final semester. In this study, the students' demographic profile, entry qualifications and the subjects taken by the students in pre‐university level are used as the predictor variable for the students' performance in the degree programme.

The result of the study shows that the predictor variables do explain the variance in the students' final CGPA. In addition, it was found that knowledge prior to entering the university such as economics, mathematics and accounting is crucial in assisting the students in undertaking the courses in both business and accounting programme. The study also found that female students perform better than male students; whilst Chinese students perform better than Malay and Indian students.

The implications of this study for the academics in universities and schools are also discussed in the paper. This paper, however, does not look into variables other than students' past performance prior to entering the university that may have an influence over the students' performance in the university. Hence, this aspect may be examined in future researches.

This paper will be useful to the academic communities, the public and other interested parties who are interested in improving students' performance during their periods of study in the universities.

This study was conducted as a result of the declining numbers of Diploma in Accountancy (DIA) students obtaining a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 2.75 and above in the Sarawak Campus of UiTM. The reason why CGPA 2.75 was identified as the cut‐off point was because this is the minimum entry requirement for students to enter the degree program in Accountancy. A questionnaire survey was carried out at UiTM Sarawak Campus with the hope of finding the root cause(s) of this problem by focusing on DIA students who were in their final semesters. A total of 65 questionnaires were distributed to selected respondents in Parts 6, 7 and 8 of the DIA program. In addition to that, these students were observed without much interference to their ordinary situation, so that a more reliable outcome could be obtained. From the survey, the researchers found that the factors that caused the decline in the numbers of students achieving a CGPA of 2.75 and above can be categorized into avoidable and unavoidable. The avoidable factors include students’ attitude, study skills and peer influence. These factors are considered avoidable because they are within the students’ control. Final exam paper difficulty is an unavoidable factor, because it is not under the students’ control. The findings show that the university, lecturers and students all have significant roles to play in helping these students obtain a CGPA of 2.75 and above. They should complement one another so that their joint effort can be optimized. Based on the above findings, the researchers conclude that the university, lecturers and students should work together to produce better results not only in terms of the CGPA outcomes but also to improve the students’ attitude.

Students’ progressing to tertiary (undergrad or higher) level education often faces problems due to the change in the educational settings that may directly or indirectly affect their studies and interim results. In addition, they may suffer from low self-esteem, which in turn may result from another set of issues such as negative peers, past poor results, unable to get into a school of choice and so on. Those who have to live away from home to attend a university could have their own set of problems. To provide support many universities have counseling offices to help the students tackle their problems. The counseling officers often give repeated appointments in an attempt to help solve these problems. At the university where the research was conducted, more than 75 percent of the students come from a rural background. These are students who, for the purposes of acquiring their tertiary-level education, have had to move to the city, away from their family. These students are known to have problems such as adjusting to urban life, missing home, managing all household chores by themselves, even a culture shock given the nature of urban life and so on, all of which may affect their studies. Unfortunately, the university under study does not employ a student counselor to look after students coming from rural areas. Therefore, to support such students it was thought that a peer counseling session might help the students help themselves.

A workshop using a collaborative approach to help students solve their own problems was designed and conducted. From three different departments, 78 students with a low Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA < 2.50 out of 4.0) participated in the problem-solving workshop. The students were guided in a collaborative environment where individual problems were first identified anonymously by working in pairs and possible solutions were presented by the students themselves by working in collaborative groups.

The paper proposes a performance-improving model to reduce the dropout rate and ensure graduation with a better CGPA. After six semesters of the intervention, the performance of the participating students was compared against the students with similar profile who did not attend the workshop. The perception of effectiveness of the collaborative guidance model was also measured by taking feedback from students.

The collaborative approach seems to benefit students by empowering them to think on their own to solve study-related problems by themselves. To become a standardized procedure, however, more rigorous testing across a greater cross section and number of subjects would be helpful. This paper provides an initial study of the methodology for further study and use.

As the collaborative approach purely involves peers, it benefits students by empowering them to solve study-related problems by themselves and indirectly help self-esteem development.

Self‐efficacy has been defined as individuals’ beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about their personal capabilities that affect how they function and, which in turn influence their performance (Bandura 1977). Self beliefs can influence behaviour choices, determine the amount of effort needed and for how long, and encourage thought patterns and emotional behaviours necessary to succeed. It is theorised that students with unrealistic expectations (especially overly optimistic expectations) may have difficulty aligning efforts with desired performance levels and, as a result, perform more poorly. In this study, selfefficacy is operationalised as the difference between actual and predicted examination performance. Prediction errors in the final examination marks (MERR) and prediction error in the overall course grade (GERR) of a second year management accounting course are used as measures of Self‐efficacy. Using regression analysis, the results indicate that the efficacy measures are significant and positively related to course performance. This suggests that students who are more conservative in their expectations of the course results perform better than those who are more optimistic. The findings also showed that student characteristics of previous academic achievements (CGPA) and hours of study per week (HRWK) explained more that 40 per cent of the variations in the self‐efficacy measures. The higher a student’s CGPA, the more conservative or cautious he is in the prediction of his final course performance. The more pessimistic a student is of his final course performance, the lower the number of hours he estimates for studying the course.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not performance of employees is determined by merit of their academic excellence, which is measured by cumulative grade point average (CGPA). This paper thus attempts to measure the variables that could possibly influence employees’ performance, such as job satisfaction, motivation and involvement in co‐curriculum activities.

An adapted version of the questionnaire used by Sarmiento et al. was utilised to assess the perceived performance of employees. Ability construct was measured in terms of employee academic qualification and skills. A 13‐item scale based on Porter was used to measure motivation. A 14‐item scale based on Hackman and Oldham's Job Diagnostic Survey was used to measure job satisfaction. In total, 340 respondents from 87 companies participated in this study.

The findings revealed that there is a weak relationship between employees’ performance with CGPA. The findings also revealed that there is a weak relationship between employees’ performance and their job satisfaction, motivation and ability.

It would be meaningful for future research if actual performance appraisal report could be obtained.

Company policy makers need to provide a wider employment opportunity to everyone and not merely to candidates based on merit of their academic excellence. Many graduates may be missing out on employment opportunities while they may be the right candidates.

This paper illustrates that academic excellence, which is the main selection criterion used by most employers, is not a determinant of employees’ performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictive value of age, gender and work experience in relation to hospitality management (HM) academic success, as measured by year one leadership programme (LP) achievement and cumulative grade point average (CGPA). The association between LP and CGPA success and internship performance is also evaluated.

The sample comprised 349 international undergraduate HM students. Secondary data were compiled and analysed using SPSS. Eight hypotheses, developed from the literature were tested using χ2, t-tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests as appropriate.

Although age was not a predictor of success, males significantly outperformed females. Pre-programme work experience was not a predictor of LP performance but length of paid work experience and supervisory work experience were linked significantly to mean CGPA. LP achievement was positively associated with CGPA and with successful internship completion.

Although the student sample was international and spanned three cohorts, the data collection was limited to one institution.

Pre-programme work experience, in particular supervisory experience, and the incorporation of management competency-linked LPs into first-year HM curricula are recommended.

The paper contributes to the under-researched predictive value of age, gender and pre-programme work experience in relation to HM academic performance, in particular in an LP context. An additional innovative finding is the positive association between LP achievement and success in HM professional practice.

Although the number of higher education institutes in Iran has been increased and the capacity of many universities has been expanded by the government and private sector, the tough competition among senior high school graduates is still a major concern. Authorities have been contemplating other ways to alleviate the discontent of applicants who seek access to free of charge public universities. The Cumulative Grade‐Point Average (CGPA) of senior high school level has recently been proposed by educational authorities as the most effective substitute for measuring students’ academic performances to enter universities. The purpose of this paper is explore the pros and cons of this proposal by interviewing ten purposively selected stakeholders.

In total, ten purposively selected stakeholders were interviewed.

Out of ten informants, six of them supported the modification of the University Entrance Exam (UEE), three supported its abolition, and one supported its continuation and repetition two or three times a year.

Since any innovation or reform in the exam will affect other components in the whole education system, the informants emphasized that it should be done incrementally. The findings of this study contribute to improving the knowledge of the UEE reform options.

Over the last few decades, there have been waves of assessment reforms around the world. This paper offers an update of the assessment reform in Iran, which adds information to current literature.

This study examines whether students graduating from SSC-VOC perform better in diploma engineering programs.

This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how secondary school certificate-vocational (SSC-VOC) graduates perform in their subsequent vocational programs.

Despite having vocational training orientation, this study finds that graduates from SSC-VOC receive lower grades than their public counterparts by 0.109 cumulative grade points average (CGPA).

Findings imply that policymakers should increase teachers' numbers, salaries and laboratory facilities. In addition, collaboration between SSC-VOC institutions and polytechnics would allow them to offer a quality engineering education. In such a way, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programs prepare human resources to promote economic development and employment, expand production opportunities and improve employment quality.

This is the first piece of work conducted in Bangladesh that has examined the quality of VET graduates for furthering their studies. This study added value by providing some pragmatic suggestions for practical implications.

This study aims to investigate English recreational reading habits of Arab Jordanian EFL university students when classes are in session and during vacation, and the types of recreational reading they engage in. In addition, the study explores other relationships such as the relationship between reading habits and students ' cumulative grade point average (CGPA); and the effect of parents ' educational level and their time spent on reading.

The respondents, comprising 225 third- and fourth-year English majors, completed an English recreational reading habits questionnaire. The study utilised a non-probability sampling method, namely, purposive sampling. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS software v. 20.

The findings indicated that students read more when they were on vacation compared to their readings while classes are in session. The students ' average time spent on reading when classes are in session and during vacation is 2.15 hours and 2.82 hours per week, respectively. Slightly more than half (57 percent) the students always read emails/chat rooms/Facebook, which are their most preferred type of recreational reading. Non-fiction books were the least favourite among students with 47 percent of students indicating that they never or rarely read this type of genre. Among all the reading interests, only novels had a significant correlation with the students ' CGPA. The findings showed that the respondents with higher levels of fathers ' education were significantly reading more.

The reading habits of EFL students have received little attention and there is limited research that surveyed Arab EFL students ' recreational reading habits at the tertiary level. The purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature and set out to be a point of reference and comparison for future investigations about English recreational reading habits of Arab EFL tertiary students.