On the Quality of Higher Education in Jordan: Empirical Evidence from Princess Sumaya University for Technology

Abstract

This paper investigates the main indicators of scores of K-12 leavers who were admitted at Princess Sumaya University for Technology, PSUT, in Jordan and their graduation scores. It uses time series data covering the period 1993-2012, including all 3,229 Bachelor graduates in all specialisations. The paper applies several statistical techniques to describe and test the relationships among educational variables. After that, the paper specifies an Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model that determines the relationship between K-12 leavers' grade-point average (GPA) and Bachelor graduates' GPA. It uses Granger causality to test the existence of causality. We also test score differences for gender, specialisation and time variations. Empirical results of these tests provide strong evidence that secondary GPA has no significant effect on graduation GPA. Moreover, the two GPAs had very small correlations and secondary GPA does not cause university GPA. The implication being that varia