The Influence Upon University Performance of the Study of Economics At School

Abstract

Part 3, SUMMARYThe relationship between external examination results at school and performance at university has prompted a good deal of comment and a certain amount of research. This study examines this relationship in detail for a particular subject, economics, which has seen the most rapid expansion in the numbers of A-level candidates since the institution of the a.c.E. in 1951, by tracing the performance of students passing through a single British university over a IS-year period. In view of the frequent observation that, in general, school study of economics scarcely helps university performance in the same subject, the authors incorporated into their multiple correlation analysis, in addition to the commonly employed types of data on the students, certain specially collected details relating to their school background. The results throw light on a number of associations between particular characteristics of students and their performance in economics at university. 1968]

The Determinants of Success in University Introductory Economics Courses

“…2 If characteristics of incoming students are reliable predictors of their ultimate fate in the introductory economics course, students and departmental resources could be more efficiently allocated by excluding, ex ante, students with low probabilities of success. A number of previous studies have examined the impact of a range of measures of high school performance on student performance in introductory economics courses (Harbury and Szreter 1968;Crowley and Wilton 1974;Reid 1983;Bonello, Swartz, and Davisson 1984;Dagenais 1986;Lumsden and Scott 1987;Myatt and Waddell 1990). Several features distinguish our research from these previous studies.…”

Does High School Economics Help?

“…3. Harbury and Szreter ( 1968) found that having previous economics courses was not significantly related to performance in university courses, but that grades in high school economics courses were . Unfortunately, we did not have this information for our sample.…”

“…They found that students with high school.courses know significantly more than other students at the beginning of their principles course, but that this difference is eliminated by the end of the course. Harbury and Szreter ( 1970), in a study of British students, controlled for various factors and found that high school economics made no difference either at the beginning or end of the university principles course. Finally, Saunders (1970) reported that students with high school economics courses knew significantly more at the end of the term even though they worked significantly fewer hours on the principles course, other things equal.…”

“…2. See Moyer and Paden (1968), Harbury and Szreter (1968) , and Crowley and Wilton (1974) for mixed results that generally indicate little difference between the sexes . Calculus was included as an independent variable because much of microeconomic theory explicitly or implicitly deals with differentiation and integration , and because it may be a proxy for analytical and mathematical aptitude .…”

The research orientation of British universities

“…A. Wankowski (1972); (d) C. D. Harbury and R. Szreter (1968); (e) Sources quoted in J. Heywood (1971).…”