The academic performance of Vocational Education and Training pathway university students and the effects of gender and age

Recently, several countries have attempted to encourage life-long learning and to widen university accessibility to include a wider mix of students. In Australia, numerous new pathways with the Vocational Education and Training sector have been established for these purposes. This study reports on the effects that two variables, gender and age, had on the university academic performance of students who had taken a Vocational Education and Training pathway to an Australian university using whole cohort data (n = 542) for Vocational Education and Training pathway students enrolled between 2005 and 2012; two-way between-group analyses of variance were conducted to assess the effects of both gender and age on undergraduate academic achievement. Age and gender were both related to students’ academic performance, with higher performance among female students and groups of older students. There were also differences in the effects that gender had on academic performance depending upon age group.