Paying tuition and academic performance of students at Kragujevac University School of Medicine.
OBJECTIVE
To assess whether the prospect of waiving tuition fees influenced the academic performance of students with the lowest admission test scores and consequent mandatory tuition.


METHODS
We compared academic performance of 75 tuition-paying students with the students who did not have to pay tuition because they scored well on the 1996-1998 admission tests to the Kragujevac School of Medicine. We formed 3 control groups (high-, medium- and low-ranked students on the admission test), each with the similar number of students as the group of tuition-paying students. Students performance was assessed after the first two academic years on the basis of their average grades, number of tries to pass the same examination, the time needed to pass an examination after a course, and the number of repeated years.


RESULTS
Of 75 tuition-paying students admitted to the School in the 1996-1998 period, 11 had their tuition permanently waived and were therefore excluded from the analysis after the first year. Tuition-paying students had the average grade of 6.8 +/- 3.2 (grade range 6-10), took each exam twice before passing it, needed more than four months of studying to pass an exam, and repeated 0.1 years per student. Their performance was statistically worse than the performance of the low-ranked group of control students in all parameters, except in the number of repeated years. The high-, medium-, and low-ranked student groups did not differ significantly in their performance, but all performed significantly better than the tuition-paying group in three following parameters: average grade (high-ranked group: 8.2 +/- 1.3), average number of tries to pass an exam (high-ranked group: 1.8 +/- 0.8), and average time of studying needed to pass an exam (high-ranked group: 119.6 +/- 65.9 days).


CONCLUSIONS
The prospect of waiving tuition fees has no influence on students performance. The students rank on the admission test is a major predictor of their subsequent academic performance.
Janković
Slobodan M
SM
Kragujevac University School of Medicine, Kragujevac, FR Yugoslavia, slobnera@EUnet.yu
Tufegdzić
Boris I
BI
Vuković
Marko V
MV
Folić
Miroslav
M
D004501:Education, Medical / Q000191:economics*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D012570:School Admission Criteria; D015022:Yugoslavia