Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of self-motivation on the relationship betweenparent’s socio-economic backgrounds on their children’s academic performance at Nigerian Universities, whichhas received little attention. Issues concerning University undergraduate youths have become a cause for concernamong stakeholders in the project called ‘education in Nigeria’. Such issues like expulsion from school due toexamination malpractice or cultism, withdrawal due to poor academic performance and production of half-bakedgraduates have forced many concerned people to question the role of teachers as well as parent’s socio-economicbackground. The paper adopted a survey methodology to solicit responses from 150 final year Universitystudents (2012/2013) of Business Faculties in the north, east and west regions of Nigeria; using stratifiedproportionate random sampling. After data cleaning, 130 data were analyzed using descriptive statistics andhierarchical regression. One of the results indicated that student’s self-motivation (hard work) and rich parentalsocio-economic background are needed to achieve academic success; though self-motivation appears to be amore critical success factor. The paper recommended that the government and the authorities of Nigerianuniversities should intensify effort at counselling the students on the need to study hard in order to achieveacademic success rather than relying on their parents’ socio-economic background. This will improve teachingand learning in Nigerian Universities. The study is limited to University Business Faculties in Nigeria. Futurestudies can investigate other tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

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