Class of Degree and Postgraduate Students’ Performance in a Nigerian University

Aims: University education remains the engine tower of development in any country. In the realization of this, goals of university education and strategies to achieve them were clearly spelt out in the Nigeria National Policy on Education. Some employers of labour have been lamenting on the poor quality of Nigerian graduates despite that some of them came out with good grades. Class of degree speaks volume in the employment and admission criteria of this country. The thrust of this paper therefore is to examine the influence of class of degree on postgraduate students’ performance.

Study Design: The study adopted descriptive research design of the survey type.

Place and Duration of Study: The population comprised all the entire masters’ students that graduated from Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria between 2015/2016 and 2018/2019 sessions.

Methodology: Proportional stratified random sampling technique was used to select one hundred and eighty nine (189) masters’ graduates from the six faculties of the university. Simple percentage, bar chart and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for data analysis.

Results: Finding showed that: (i) There is no significant difference in the performance of postgraduate students in course work based on class of degrees (F2,1860.05 = 0.527, p = 0.492 >0.05). (ii) There is no significant difference in the performance of postgraduate students in dissertation based on class of degrees (F2,1860.05 = 2.697, p = 0.070 >0.05).

Conclusion: Class of degree at undergraduate level has nothing to do with postgraduate students’ performance at postgraduate level. It was recommended that class of degree at undergraduate level should not be solely used to select candidates for admission into postgraduate programmes. Multiple measures should be adopted.