Potential predictors of length of study for finance and accounting degrees: evidence from a public business school in Saudi Arabia

The accumulated evidence from developed countries indicates that a large proportion of undergraduates exceed the normal time to obtain their degrees before completing their baccalaureate studies, which has attracted the attention of academics and policy-makers. However, the evidence on degree completion in developing countries is scant to nonexistent. The present study aims to fill this gap by developing a predictive model to explore the impact of the student's preadmission criteria and academic performance indicators on the study length for graduates of the bachelor of business administration (BBA) degree in finance and accounting in a Saudi public university. We used deidentified demographic and academic data from the 2018/2019 cohort of students at the College of Business and Economics (CBE), Qassim University. The dataset is assembled from official administrative student records. Using multinomial logistic regression (MLR), we find that students with a higher college entry age, higher secondary school score percentage, higher General Achievement Test (GAT) score, and higher academic performance in “gatekeeper” quantitative courses, including mathematics, statistics and economics, are more likely to graduate within the normal time to degree. The implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.