A Critique of Admission Criteria into Pharmacy Programme at Tshwane University of Technology : Students Performance at First Year

This explanatory cross-sectional quantitative study used secondary data to explain the relationship between the admission criteria and the Tshwane University of Technology's (TUT) first year pharmacy student's performance. The result from Pearson's chi-square test indicates that admission points, score and gender were not significantly associated with whether or not a student would pass first year of the pharmacy programme. However, both crude and adjusted logistic regression revealed that male students were insignificantly less likely to be successful than their female counterparts. Identifying new predictors of academic performance may assist schools of pharmacy in retaining and subsequently graduating better pharmacists. Predictors of academic performance can be used to adjust admissions criteria. The results of the study are important for school counsellors and educational practitioners in both colleges and higher education, as well as for academic developers in higher education. Therefore, it is suggested that additional, new approaches to the selection of students for admission may be required in light of the everchanging nature of the profession.