School of Higher Education Studies

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    Profiles of successful B.Com. (Finance) students entering a South African university before and after the introduction of the National Senior Certificate
    (University of the Free State, 2014-07) Oosthuizen, Annelie; Viljoen, M. C.; Eiselen, R. J.
    English: Since 1994, the South African national school curriculum, from the foundation phase through to the further education and training phase, has been and still is in the process of being redesigned for the post-apartheid era. One of the major events in the national process of curriculum reform was the replacement of the Senior Certificate (NATED 550) with the National Senior Certificate, awarded for the first time in 2008. The Grade 12s of 2008 were variously described as ‘guinea pigs’ or ‘pioneers’. Questions have arisen as to whether the National Senior Certificate curriculum adequately equips learners to achieve academic success at university, and whether the higher education institutions have adapted to the ‘products’ of the National Senior Certificate, who entered their academic programmes for the first time in 2009. Some of the challenges related to the changes in the national school curriculum, that the South African higher education sector is faced with include poor academic performance and high drop-out rates. These occurrences are of concern to South African higher education in general, and also particularly to the institution where this investigation was conducted. From an institutional perspective, it is important to be aware of the biographical factors and academic achievement characteristics included in the profiles of successful students. Moreover, skills form part of a holistic approach to curriculum construction. The main purpose of this research study was to determine the profiles of successful B.Com. (Finance) students entering a South African university before and after the introduction of the National Senior Certificate. In order to do so, factors associated with the students’ transition from secondary school to higher education and factors contributing to undergraduate student success at university were identified through a literature study. An empirical study was conducted on two cohorts of students entering the B.Com. (Finance) programme at a South African university. The first group entered the university in the year immediately before the introduction of the National Senior Certificate and the second group entered the same university in the year immediately after the introduction of the National Senior Certificate. This research study xxvii investigated the differences and similarities between successful and unsuccessful students in both of the cohorts. Biographic variables (age, gender, ethnicity) and academic variables (secondary school leaving results and subject choices as well as undergraduate academic performance at university) were investigated. For the purposes of this study, the operational definition of a successful student is a student who has succeeded in meeting all of the graduation requirements for the B.Com. (Finance) degree within the minimum time, namely three consecutive years. Descriptive statistics revealed that the success rates of students included in this investigation have decreased from 29.0% in the 2008 cohort to 15.8% in the 2009 cohort. The study also investigated the opinions and perceptions of the first cohort of students who entered higher education with the National Senior Certificate as a school-leaving qualification, regarding the skills that they required for the successful completion of the B.Com. (Finance) programme and the skills that they acquired during their secondary school education. To this effect, participants completed the B.Com. (Finance) first-year opinion survey and participated in focus-group discussions. The results of this investigation indicate that these students felt that they lacked some of the critical skills required for academic success at university. The skills most frequently considered being required for university success in commerce- and finance-related studies, which were reportedly not acquired by the target population at secondary school, are economic reasoning ability, the ability to practically implement learning content, critical thinking skills, analytical thinking skills, the ability to interpret financial information and time management skills. These findings have implications on the way in which secondary school learners and university students are taught. The target population’s biographic and academic achievement data were obtained from the Integrated Tertiary System (ITS). The primary objective of the statistical analysis was to identify profiles of successful students in two cohorts of students. A further objective of the statistical analysis was to assess the association between student success as a binary dependent variable, and the following independent variables: age, gender, ethnicity, Grade 12 Mathematics mark, exposure in secondary school to Accounting, Business Economics and Economics, the average of the first semester university mark of five compulsory modules, the matriculation xxviii score (M-score) of the 2008 cohort and the admission point score (APS) of the 2009 cohort. The data for each cohort was analysed using descriptive, univariate and multivariate analyses. The logistic regression model for student success initially contained eight independent variables. The likelihood ratio chi-square statistics and associated p-values were calculated for each variable in the model. Stepwise model selection was applied by removing, one at a time, the variable among the independent variables which is found to be least significantly associated with student success. Logistic regression revealed that when success in B.Com. (Finance) is analysed by means of a multiple logistic regression, the most significant predictors of student success in the 2009 cohort were the Mathematics mark obtained in the National Senior Certificate and Business Economics taken at secondary school. The most significant predictors of student success in the 2008 cohort were the matriculation score (M-score), age and Accounting taken at secondary school. The findings of this study create a platform for continued debate on admission requirements and the importance of specific skills required for success in commerce and finance-related degrees at university. The findings culminated in recommendations for higher education institutions, educators and those embarking on future research relating to the theme in question.