An analysis of Naval Officer student academic performance in the Operations Analysis curriculum in relationship to academic profile codes and other factors

Abstract

The ability to forecast the academic performance of Naval Officer students in the Operations Analysis curriculum is an issue of importance to the Navy. In the interest of cost effectiveness and achieving the required numbers of operations analysis graduates, this thesis studies the present student selection factors for the OA curriculum and suggests several alternative factors to improve the selection decision. An analysis of variance approach was taken to explore the relationship of the student's academic profile code and several other variables to determine their importance in explaining the CA student's academic performance. A study of 159 Navy OA students was completed. The analysis showed the student's overall total college grade point average, the time from completion of college to commencement of work in the OA curriculum (in fact performance does not decrease over time), the student's designator and his college degree to be the most important factors in explaining the variability of student performance.