ABSTRACT Education plays a vital role in the socioeconomic development of a country. Higher education institutions should be able to provide quality education to youngsters. However, there are multiple factors that negatively affect students’ academic performance resulting in poor grades. This paper focuses on exploring new variables that affect the academic performance of students in higher education institutions of Pakistan through phenomenological qualitative research approach. For sampling, purposive and snowball techniques were used by the researcher. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for undergraduate students from different cities and factors affecting their academics and Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) were identified. Factors attributed to visiting faculty, unannounced quizzes, online classes, discrimination by teachers and being day scholar student were found to be negatively related with students’ academic performance. To overcome the issues caused by these parameters, necessary steps need to be taken by the policy makers of higher education institutions. Visiting faculty needs to be aware of the institute’s policies and grading system, and provides office hours to students. Teachers should be advised to reduce the number of surprise quizzes, and online classes should be discouraged. Training programmes and counselling sessions should be organised for faculty members to overcome the problem of discrimination. Hostel facilities should be improved, and day scholars and hostelites should make combined study and project groups for better class harmony and effective collaboration. By implementing all these actions, students would be able to learn more effectively, and hence their academic performance and overall quality of education would be improved.
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