Post-utme screening and year one students’ academic performance: Any relationship?

Abstract

Adequate high-level skilled manpower is needed to drive and sustain economic, socio-cultural and political development of any nation, to achieve this, quality university education is pivotal. Hence this study examined the relationship of career counseling, study habit pattern family socioeconomic status with academic performance of the University of Ibadan year one students. In Nigeria, the National University Commission (NUC) an umbrella body of all universities both private and government owned introduced Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Post-UTME) to screen further candidates for university admission. Three hundred (300) students across fourteen faculties were recruited using a multistage sampling technique to respond to a structured measuring instrument, with the participants’ current CGPA. The results established that there was a positive and significant relationship of all the factors with academic performance of the participants; school counseling (r =.610, p<0.01) and study habits (r =.731, p<0.01). The study concludes that school counseling and study habits are important factors for improving academic performance of university students. Thus, the study recommends students’ personal study habits skills development, establishment of faculties/colleges counseling unit in addition to central university counseling center so as to cater for individual student peculiarity via their field of study.