The Impact of Lecturer-Student Relationship on Self-Esteem and Academic Performance at Higher Education

This research examined the effects of lecturer-student relationship on the self-esteem and academic performance of nursing students at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. The descriptive statistics on the level-clustered random samples indicated two of the lecturer-student relationships, more connectedness and non-threatening, to be positive while the other two, independent and conflicting, were negative relationships. Thus the student-lecturer relationship was an average. With the exception of connectedness, where low score showing less connectedness rather resulted in high self-esteem, the rest of the reported lecturer-student relationships correlated in good dimensions with high self-esteem of the students. However, while the association seemed to promote self-esteem, it rather indicated opposite dimension with regard to academic performance with increasing number of years spent in the department. The study revealed that because there was little interaction between lecturers and students resulting in the average relationship, the prevailing relationship did not directly or not strong enough to influence high academic and high level attainment but rather encouraged high self-esteem which in turn stimulated high academic and level attainment significantly (p