Abstract

This study was undertaken with the objective of carrying out a comparative analysis of academic achievement of UME and ex-Remedial students with University of Agriculture, Makurdi as a case study to assist Government and policy makers in educational sector reform decisions as to the suitability or otherwise of domiciling remedial programmes in the Universities. The comparative assessment was based on Senate approved results for the 1^st semester of the 2004/2005 session by arranging the academic achievement in terms of Grade Point Average (GPA) into mode of entry (Direct entry, UME and Remedial). Based on a population of 511 ex-Remedial and 428 UME students spread across 28 programmes, 17 academic Departments and 8 Colleges, the data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel computer software in terms of range, mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis so as to provide leading answers to the questions initiating the research. Comparative analysis of data indicate that the lowest GPAs were recorded by UME in 76.9% of the programmes, 76.5% of the Departments and 75% of the Colleges with two recorded cases of GPA of 0.00. Highest GPAs were recorded by UME in 76.9% of the programmes, 73.3% of the Departments and 100% of the Colleges with overall maximum of 4.72. However, smaller range recorded by ex-Remedial in 88.9% of the programmes, 93.8% of the Departments and 100% of the Colleges shows that remedial achievements were more consistent than the UME which indicates unpredictability. Higher mean and smaller standard deviations were recorded for Remedial in 44.4 and 96% of the programmes, 41.2 and 94.1% of the Departments and 50 and 100% of the Colleges respectively indicating that ex-Remedial GPAs were clustered more closely to the means (which were comparatively competitive) than UME. Desirable skewness and kurtosis behavior was recorded in 58.3 and 25% for the programmes, 70.6 and 36.4% of the Departments and 62.5 and 40.0% of the Colleges respectively indicating that more of the ex-Remedial students are in the high performance group than UME. T-test at 5% level of significance showed that there was no significant difference between the achievements of ex-Remedial and UME students in 92.6% of the programmes, 88.2% of the Departments and 87.5% of the Colleges. However, the University-wide test showed significant difference. The ex-Remedial students were found to have higher, consistent and predictable achievement than the UME. Based on findings, it is recommended that Remedial programme should be allowed to stay as a means of meeting up admission quota and addressing issues of imbalance, post-JAMB test introduced by Universities should be sustained, ex-Remedial students should be given time to remedy their deficiencies before graduation and placement of ex-Remedial students should be officially published in JAMB brochure and accepted by NUC as part of the admission requirements in Nigerian Universities.

Key words: Academic achievement, comparative analysis, UME, ex-remedial, university education, Nigeria.