Abstract:

High quality tertiary education is a crucial foundation for successful career, personal development, and later employability. Universities aim to educate highly qualified graduates who are able to meet the needs of all sectors of human activities which combine high-level knowledge and skills, including professional education.

Current accreditation criteria require each university to monitor and assess its educational effectiveness by quantitative evaluating. Assessment refers to all processes employed by academic staff to make judgments about the students´ achievements and failures. According to Allen, assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information from multiple and diverse sources in order to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and can do with their knowledge as a result of their educational experiences; the process culminates when assessment results are used to improve subsequent learning Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education by Allen 2004). Assessment as a dynamic process produces data, from which reasonable conclusions are derived by stakeholders for decision-making that expectedly impact on students' learning outcomes.

Monitoring and statistical assessing the institutional performance is a key to understanding students´ achievements and failures. In an endeavour to widen the understanding connected to factors predicting academic achievement in tertiary education, the authors gathered and analysed data which focused on a descriptive survey of students applying for studies at the Faculty of Military Leadership.

Furthermore, they have analysed the following data:
- any relationship between the entrance examination results and results in specific subjects (mathematics, economics, English, physical education);
- any relationship between results of the entrance examination and overall results.

Exploratory statistics, Categorical data analysis, and Non-parametric statistical tests of the hypothesis regarding these relationships are described in the last part of this article.

Keywords:

Monitoring and assessment, students’ performance, academic achievements, educational experience.