Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico

Article Analysis: Student Academic Performance in Undergraduate Managerial Accounting Courses

Joanne Brenes Catinchi Id: 51700 Jovanni Bourdn Prez Id: 74970 Michelly Barreto Melndez Id: 48568 Isabel Lugo Vlez Id: 23711 Xaymara Medina Soto Id: 74972

Contents Paper Summary Discussion Results Conclusions References ..03 ..05 ..08 ..11

Paper Summary Accounting education is a must in the business world and has been capturing the attention of researchers. This discipline impacts all people, regardless of job position. Its importance has been promoted within the new business era. (Al-Twaijry, 2010) in this article has the objective to identify potential factors possibly affecting students performance in three sequential management accounting courses: MA for Managerial Accounting (second year, fourth semester), CA for Cost Accounting (third year, sixth semester) and AMA for Advanced Managerial Accounting (fourth year, eighth and final semester) within the Saudi Arabian context. Based on the article, the Saudi Arabian business education system has an average undergraduate student program of 4 years. Both Arabic and English languages are used as a medium of instruction. Government regulations do not allow female instructors to teach male students, but in some special situation they accept to use video conference. The Educational System is based in an 85% on examinations and in a 15% on homework, attendance and projects. The students passing level is 60%. The lowest GPA required for attendance is 2.0. If the GPA stays below 2.0 the student loses his or her stipend and has from three up to five times opportunities to increase the GPA, otherwise the student must leave the university. The purpose of this article is to understand some researches and statistic analysis to compare and understand results. The author focused his research on improving the quality of accounting education in the Saudi Arabian context. A variety of researchers have conducted studies to evaluate the effect of background features like pre-university academic achievement, preuniversity accounting background and mathematics background. Based on this, the author mentioned eleven (11) hypotheses were developed to find solutions to this special case. The following hypotheses were included by the Author and are described as follow.
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H1 the performance of the students with a pre-university accounting acquaintance would be significantly higher in the university management accounting courses than those without such experience.

H2 the performance of the students with higher secondary school GPA would be significantly better in the university management accounting courses than those with a lower GPA.

H3 the performance of undergraduate business students with a higher secondary school GPA would be significantly better than those with a lower GPA.

H4 - the performance of undergraduate business students who graduated fron scientific high schools would be significantly higher than those who graduated from nonscientific high schools.

H5 the undergraduate students who perform better in the financial accounting course would also perform significantly better in the management accounting courses.

H6 the performance of business students entering the University after the year 2000 would be significantly higher than those who entered before the year 2000

H7 the undergraduate students who perform better in a managerial accounting course would also significantly perform better in the other managerial accounting services.

H8 the undergraduate students achieving better in pre-university mathematics would perform significantly better in the university management accounting courses than those whose achievement in mathematics is poorer.

H9 the performance of undergraduate business students who have done well in preuniversity mathematics would be significantly higher than those whose achievement in pre-university mathematics is poor.

H10 Undergraduate students with small load would perform significantly better in the university management accounting courses as compared to those with a large load.

H11 the performance of undergraduate business students with a small load would be significantly higher as compared to those with a large load.

Although the article mentioned other factors that can potentially affect the student academic performance, such as class size, course problems, attendance, students personality and Instructors attributes. (Al-Twaijry, 2010) used a sample of 312 registered students in the academic year 2000, 2001 and 2002. The data was taken from students present files which showed all semesters details such as: registered hours, passed hours, term GPA, overall GPA, and specialization. Also, the data collected came from files that contain pre-university information such as high school transcripts, date of birth, addresses, and specials needs. All the data collected was showed on different tables illustrated on the article. Discussion Results (Al-Twaijry, 2010) used the Statistical Analysis, Hypothesis Testing and validated other researches assessments. The sample considered was the students who had studied at least one accounting course at high school and those who had not. The sample showed that students with pre-university accounting backgrounds performed slightly better in the MA course. In the CA course, students without such backgrounds performed slightly better. But, students who had some experience in accounting before university did significantly better in the AMA course. That means that H1 was accepted for only AMA course. Other sample evaluated was the students who do well at high school, who were are also expected to perform well at university. The statistics revealed that the students who performed
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better before university did significantly better in the MA course and less significantly in the CA course. These results agree with the findings of (Jackling & Anderson, 1998). On the other hand, the results for the AMA course were not high enough. Because of this, H2 was accepted for MA course only. The analysis was extended to the performance in the other term courses (measured by the term GPA) and all university courses (measured by the overall GPA). The statistics revealed that students with a higher pre-university academic performance do significantly better at the university level (only on first term). The statistics showed that the difference between means for term GPA was significant only in Term 4 and was not significant in Term 6 and 8. The H3 was accepted for Term 4. But the difference between overall GPA means was significantly in all cases. Therefore, H3 for overall performance could not be rejected. The author used the t test to examine the idea if the type of high school may affect undergraduate business student performance. The test showed that there were no significant differences in the GPAs between students from scientific high school and those from other high schools. Therefore, H4 must be rejected. The author explored the H8 hypothesis. After using mean comparison of grade in the course between students with a grade in mathematics equal to 65% or more and others with less than 65% in mathematics, the significant difference was found in the MA course. Thus, H8 could not be rejected for MA course. The author said that the result is consistent with the (2005) findings regarding the effect of mathematics achievements on the student performance in financial accounting. After reviewed the result, H8 for CA and AMA and also H9 cannot not be accepted.

Another result revealed which is related to students entering the university in the year 2000 or later, show that they performed significantly better in the MA course compared with students enrolled before the year 2000. Thus, H6 was accepted for the MA course. Also, the difference between the means of hours passed by these two groups was not significant in all three terms (4, 6, 8 ). Otherwise, the result for the GPA was better for those matriculating in the year 2000 or later but not equal to Term 4, 6 and 8. On the other hand, H6 could be rejected related to term performance. However, students enrolled in year 2000 or later (overall GPA) performed significantly better than those enrolled before year 2000. Thus, H6 could not reject for overall performance. One of the techniques that the Author used was to introduce the correlation analysis. The data interpretation for the students performance in financial accounting to their performance in management accounting demonstrated a significantly correlation on FA and MA. FA has not a significant correlation with CA. But, FA and AMA have less strength correlation. H5 could not be rejected except for the CA course. Otherwise, it is good to retain FA course as a prerequisite for MA course. MA is a prerequisite of CA. CA is prerequisite of AMA. It can be seen that three courses are correlated. The analysis showed that MA is significantly but not strongly correlated to CA and AMA. H7 is accepted for the correlation of MA and CA and MA and AMA. In the other hand, there is not significantly correlation between CA and AMA. Another technique used by the author was the Load Analysis. The author collected the number of registered hours on the registration system and used the t test to analyze the data. MA course showed a significantly difference but CA and AMA did not showed a significantly result. Following this result, H10 must be rejected.

The author compared the term GPA means between students with more than 15 hr and those with equal to or fewer than 15 registered hours per week. On terms 4, 6 and 8, the term GPA means was significantly better, and then H11 could be rejected. The author used the Spearman test to demonstrate more findings. The test demonstrated a significantly correlation between student performance in the MA, CA and AMA courses and student performance in the other courses (term GPA). A weaker correlation was found on students general performance in the other courses (term GPA). Also, the accounting student performance versus non-accounting students revealed that the mean performance of accounting students in the MA course was significantly better. However, the accounting students performance in the CA course was significantly better than the other comparison group. The Spearman test showed that means of accounting students overall GPA were significantly higher than the means of other students overall GPA. Another result demonstrated no significantly difference in the performance in the MA course between normal terms and summer terms. Therefore, students who studied AMA in normal terms performed better than those who had taken the course in summer term. The author mentioned that a careful selection of the course offer on summer should be considered. Conclusions Through the article (Al-Twaijry, 2010) was able to identified factors which may affect accounting student performance in Saudi Arabia, mainly in the accounting courses. The percentage of failing the course goes up to 50% in contrast to an 80% of passing the course. It is interesting to know that this high percentage of students passed the class with low marks (D and C).

There is significant evidence to show the effect of pre-university academic ability on the MA course and on the overall performance. The pre-university accounting background has a significant impact on the AMA course and also the mathematics ability affects student performance in the MA course. In addition there was no evidence found between the type of the high school and the student performance. Students with better performance in the MA, CA and AMA have same performance in other term courses and university courses. Results also indicated that students performed better in normal term than summer terms. No negative impact was found in terms of the number of weekly registered hours. The study shows that students enrolled in year 2000 or later performed better in MA course. After reviewing the above results, the author highlight that there is a strong need for qualitative and quantitative research to determine the problems that are affecting the students achievements, specifically in managerial accounting courses. Some of the factors may include the effect of teaching styles, gender, evaluation and examination structure, course content, scheduling system, the absenteeism problem, student capability, etc. After reviewing results by (Chinwuba Ambrose, 2011), it can be learned that, at least, gender factor is not a significant variable in the academic performance of students. Many other researchers have been investigating all the possible variables that affect the students performance in managerial accounting course. Nowadays universities are using research recommendations and findings to improve their courses offerings providing new opportunities for the students. Online courses represent an example of an adaptation of the course with students work life. In summary, every educational institution is focused on new educational methods that can be aligned with their society context. Researchers should continue conducting studies and
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providing recommendations on this subject in order to make final recommendations. It cannot be concluded that the investigated factors are determinants of the student performance without taking into consideration additional factors on this investigation.

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References
Al-Twaijry, A. A. (2010). Student academic performance in undergraduate managerial-accounting courses. Journal of Education for Business , 312-322. Chinwuba Ambrose, O. (2011). Academic Performance of Male versus Female Accounting Undergraduate Students: Evidence from Nigeria.

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