INTELLIGENCE AND UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENT AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Introduction
For many decades now attempts have been made by educationists and psychologists to study academic achievement in relation to intelligence, classroom climate and such like variables. But to our knowledge no study has been conducted to explore the association of intelligence and university environment, taken together, with academic achievement. It is also crucial to find out if these two variables are inter-correlated. Moreover, it is important to know the level of their contribution to academic achievement, individually and conjointly. The present study was an attempt to investigate these problems.

Method
A total of 300 students (150 boys and 150 girls) constituted the sample of the study, all of whom were Iranian students from universities located in Tehran. The technique of stratified sampling was employed for the selection of the students from different disciplines (arts and science). The Modified Alpha Examination Form 9, designed by The Psychological Corporation New York, and the University Environment Scale, designed and standardized by Sinha, University of Patna, India, were used for the collection of the data. Multivariate analysis has been done with the help of step-wise multiple regression analysis to analyze the data.

Results
The findings of the present study show that Intelligence is a powerful predictor of academic achievement while university environment (with five sub-variables) is potentially a strong predictor of academic achievement. The analysis of results further shows that the two independent variables conjointly account for higher variance of the dependent variable i.e. Academic Achievement than it can be accounted for by each of them taken singularly.

Discussion and Conclusion
Indeed many variables affect the variance of academic achievement of the university students. These variables may be classified into two categories: hereditary and acquired ones. Intelligence is a God-given property. Academic environment is where the intelligence of the students flourishes. Hence reliable knowledge of the role of intelligence and the academic environment where it flourishes as well as their relationship with academic achievement would help the students have a better academic achievement and would assist the educationists and planners in their professional endeavor.