113 alternative that the students can choose is to go through diploma studies. The diploma courses
are offered by education institutions that recognized by the senate of UMS like Universiti Institut Teknologi Mara UiTM, Politeknik and some of the private colleges. The duration of study in
this diploma course normally 3 years, which means by age of 20 years old, the students will enroll into a university for their bachelor degree program. To further their studies in the degree
program, the students should also achieve at least a CGPA of 2.00. Thus, in the current study, the type of entry measurement will be grouped into three groups, namely, STPM, Matriculation and
Diploma. 3.3.2 Sponsorship
We categorize the sponsorship into three types. The three types of sponsorship are 1. Government Education Loan, 2. Others and 3. Self-Funded. In Malaysia, students who want to
pursue their studies may apply education loan from Majlis Amanah Rakyat MARA, Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam JPA or Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional PTPTN. These
are the three government institutions that are responsible to sponsor Malaysian students to further their studies. The “Others” category represents other agency or institution that offer
education loan or scholarship. Normally, this institution is established by the respective state governments in Malaysia, such as, Yayasan Pelajaran Sabah. Students who do not apply for any
education loan or scholarship from the institutions and their studies are being funded by their parents are categorized as self-funded.
3.3.3 Academic Background Students whose background is from science stream are group as Science. On the other hand, non-
science students are grouped into Art. 3.3.4 Gender
Gender has been one of the main factors that can influence the students’ performance. As shown by Garkaz et. al. 2011 who claimed that women on average, were getting higher academic
achievement than men. However, Byrne, M. and Flood, B 2008 found that there was no significant difference between male and female in terms of academic performance in the first
year of an accounting program at an Irish University. Thus, this leads this current study to
examine whether gender has any significant relationship to accounting students’ performance.
4. Discussion and Limitation
This study proposes and examines the factors that affecting accounting students’ performance in UMS. In this university, there are some procedures in selecting students to be enrolled in the
accounting program. As mentioned earlier, students that enroll into the university can be from three methods, that is, through STPM, Matriculation and Diploma. Nowadays, the competition to
enter the public universities is quite high. Most of the students perform very well during their STPM, matriculation and diploma studies. Thus, it is likely that students with very good result
normally will be selected to enroll in the public universities. In Malaysia, accounting program is one of the professional programs that is being offered besides engineering, medical, architecture,
law and other professional programs. Therefore, during the selection process, students with CGPA 3.50 and above will be selected for enrollment into the university.
114 With the best result being selected to enter university, this group of students should perform
better and theoretically, they should be able to maintain their result towards the end of the accounting degree program. However, what we see for the past few years contradicted our
expectations. Some of these students did not perform well during their studies in the university. In fact, their results become worse from one semester to another semester. For example, some
top scoring students who enrolled into the university with CGPA 4.00 failed to maintain the result in the accounting degree program and graduate with CGPA below 3.50 and surprisingly,
some even graduated with CGPA below 3.00. Therefore, this is a strong motivation for this research to examine the reasons behind this.
5. Conclusion
The main objective of Accounting Programme of Universiti Malaysia Sabah is to produce qualified professional accountants to meet the 2020 Vision Prospektus Prasiswazah Universiti
Malaysia Sabah, 20112012. Thus, in order to achieve this objective, excellence in academic performance becomes one of the indicators. However, this objective cannot be achieved if the
academic students’ performance is below expectations. Currently, we realize that some of the students who entered the university with a good result from their STPM, matriculation or
diploma failed to perform well at the end of their study. Thus, the research seeks to examine the factors contribute to the students’ academic performance. It is the hope of this study that the
factors identified in this research will help to achieve the objective of accounting program and the university in producing qualified professional accountants.
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