Factors affecting the academic performance of the undergraduate students, with special reference to the University students in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The education has become one of the most emerging and competitive industry in Sri Lankan market. In recent years many private universities and education institutes are established in the country in order to make more opportunities to get degrees and other qualifications. The advanced level exam is the most competitive exam in the Sri Lankan education as here mention due to many reasons such as the key qualification to enter into a state university, more important for the future career and high competition. The university education is one of the most important exams after the Advanced Level exam in Sri Lanka. Since the entire undergraduates who got good marks in their Advanced level it makes more and more competitive. As found by the number of researchers in their studies show, there are many factors that are affecting for the academic performance of the undergraduate students. So the focus of the study is to identify the factors that affected for the academic performance of university students with special reference to university students in Sri Lanka. According to this study, the academic performance has measured through better exam results (GPA).Stress, attitude, exam preparation, writing exam paper and the time management are the independent variables of the study. Based on the variables, five hypotheses have developed.University of Kelaniya has taken at the research site of the study and 200 students  have selected through the sampling method of non-probability convenience sampling.Both primary and secondary sources used for the study and the primary data collection have been conducted via a self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive data analytics enriched with correlation analysis have used to analysis data with the aid of SPSS. The study findings showed that there’s a positive, strong relationship between the time management and the academic performance. Also, it has found that, there’s a weak positive relationship between exam preparation, stress, attitude and writing exam paper between the academic performances of the students.