Performance in first year university accounting: Quantifying the advantage of secondary school accounting

Abstract

Abstract Considerable research has been conducted into the relation between students' level of previous accounting knowledge and their subsequent performance in first year university‐level accounting. This study considers variables for academic performance and previous accounting knowledge in an attempt to quantify the advantage that high school accounting gives students entering tertiary business courses. The results indicate that for students entering tertiary courses with similar academic ability, i.e., obtained the same entrance score, the first year tertiary accounting result obtained by a student who studied accounting previously is between one and two grades higher than that of a student who did not study accounting at high school.