The impact of students’ intake quality on the performance of engineering undergraduates

Abstract

The quality of intake of students in terms of Z score to a particular course to different universities differs vastly in Sri Lanka. The students who get higher Z score goes to established universities mostly under merit category and the students from educationally disadvantaged districts with less Z score enter to the newly established universities. The variation in quality of intake in these newly established universities is greater and there is a concept that students‘ performance in the undergraduate program associated with the quality of intake. In this study the relationship between Z score and the student performance in the Engineering degree programme at the Faculty of Engineering, South Eastern University of Sri Lanka was analyzed for 92 students. This study revealed that the quality of intake has no influence on the performance of the students but gender has influence in the performance. This study emphasis the current partial quota system of allocation to different districts proportional to the population and educationally disadvantaged districts should exist.