'After all, most of the 'myth' has some blurred empirical foundation' - Determinants of University Level Performance of Students: Case Study of Rural Development Course Covered in 2008 within Mekelle University

There is a widely accepted claim which insists that students’ performance at Ethiopian universities is constrained by poor educational input provided at high school level and especially by students’ limited capacity to communicate in English. For the specific course analyzed under this paper the impact of high school performance is found to be positive but very marginal. But based on Grade point average there is positive and significant association between high school performance and university performance, especially at freshman level. But this strong association is not specifically related to math or English performance per se but to over all performance.