Accountancy learning skills and student performance in accounting education: evidence from the South African context

This paper uses data from 4745 first-year accountancy students of a large South African university, for a 7-year period (2011–2017), to understand how certain skills endowments and individual attributes have changed in their contributions to student’s performance over time. To do so, the variance associated with an external shock to the learning system – in the form of the country’s 2015 and 2016 ‘RhodesMustFall’ and ‘FeesMustFall’ student protests – is used to derive unique insights into these relationships. Factor analysis and ordinary least squares are applied to test the predictions of appropriate theory. The study contributes to the literature by identifying four factor categorisations of different groups of skills, which predict student performance differently. Results suggest that it is generic, rather than specialised, skills that contribute to accounting student performance in this context. Financially disadvantaged students are found to have a significantly lower performance across the years of the protests.