Determinants of Educational Achievement: Comparative Analysis of Bachelor Agricultural Students in Yasouj University

Educational achievement of agricultural students is one of the main concerns of higher agricultural education officials, because it is an important factor in their efficiency at work and improvement of agricultural development. Furthermore, as a large number of human resources receive agricultural education and training by universities so, recognizing the factors affecting agricultural student's achievement is a must to enhance educational planning and presenting more appropriate educational strategies. Therefore, this study aims at discovering the effective factors in bachelor agricultural students’ educational success in Yasouj University. For this purpose, a descriptive research method and a cross-sectional survey research approach were employed. Sampling procedure was stratified random sampling. Respondents were selected from two strata of outstanding and probation bachelor agricultural students. Accordingly, 55 outstanding and 54 probation bachelor students were interviewed with the aid of a questionnaire containing open and close-ended questions. In total, 109 agricultural students participated in this study. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by some educational specialists. The result of reliability analysis indicated a value of 0.69 to 0.87 for Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient. The results indicated some factors such as gender, residence location, type of enrollment and acceptance to university were different between two types of students and theses factors affect agricultural student's educational achievement in Yasouj University. Furthermore, findings of logistic regression analysis revealed that sex, residence location, family number, academic counseling, and the need for financial aid were the best predictor for educational achievement. Therefore, improving financial aids and academic counseling were recommended.