Abstract

 
 
 In order for a student to enrol in an honours programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), a weighted average mark for their final year of undergraduate study must exceed a particular threshold value. Students are then ranked according to this weighted average mark, with entry into the honours programme offered on a top-down basis, within the constraints of teaching resources and space. A proposal has been made at UKZN to remove existing barriers for entry into an honours programme, i.e. to allow entry to any student who has completed a 3-year undergraduate degree with a major in that discipline. The impact of such a decision was investigated. By lowering the requirement for entry into an honours programme, one is expected to predict how a new cohort of students will perform. Apart from obviously having a lower weighted average mark for their final year of undergraduate study, these new students may also differ in other unobservable ways which need to be accounted for. In a regression modelling context, one is asked to predict outside the range of a collected data set. A Heckman selection model was used to account for a possible self-selection bias that may arise because the subpopulation for which a prediction is required (namely those new students who will now be able to enter an honours programme), may be significantly different from the population of UKZN undergraduate students who are currently permitted entry to an honours programme.
 
 
 
 
 Significance: 
 
 
 
 A modelling technique that accounts for a possible sample selection bias was used to determine the impact of lowering the entry requirements into the honours programme at UKZN to allow entry to any student who has completed a 3-year undergraduate degree.
 
 
 
Highlights
In order to prepare students for entry into a job market that is rapidly evolving, 3-year undergraduate degrees that were once common in North America and parts of East Asia and South America have been replaced with 4-year undergraduate degrees
In the College of Management Sciences, students have the option to complete a 3-year undergraduate degree or a 4-year degree
Because the goal was to assess the impact of lowering the entry require ment on the throughput rate in the honours programme, the actual performance of the 3233 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) graduates enrolled in honours was compared with the expected performance of all 9398 graduates who would have been allowed to enrol if the entry requirement had been a weighted average mark of 50% or more
Summary
In order to prepare students for entry into a job market that is rapidly evolving, 3-year undergraduate degrees that were once common in North America and parts of East Asia and South America have been replaced with 4-year undergraduate degrees. The socio-economic factors that affected one’s performance at an undergraduate level (in the above studies3-12) may not be as strongly pronounced for an honours degree Including these factors as covariates in our prediction model will be important for the analysis that follows. Will the lowering of this entry requirement to a weighted average mark of 50% or more have a serious impact on the throughput rate that will be recorded by students entering a fourth year (honours) study at UKZN? The application of a Heckman model to our problem – for which ‘entry into honours’ replaces ‘level of education’ as the treatment variable and a weighted average mark in honours is used as a response variable – could well be novel, but is most certainly well supported by a number of other applications in the literature
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