Understanding students’ cynicism and engagement in a Ghanaian university

Abstract

Students’ expectations about university life and the impact of their unmet
expectations on the university experience are exceedingly complex phenomena in
much of today’s higher education enterprise. Given the enormous challenges
universities face as the number of students increases, university management and
administrators require information to shape students' expectations about various
aspects of their university's education experience. This study explored Student
Cynicism (SC) and its relationship with Student Engagement (SE) at the University
for Development Studies (UDS). We collected valid data from 435 undergraduate
students enrolled in health science and non-health science programmes and
analysed them using non-parametric test techniques. The results indicate that SC
and SE are inversely related. Also, students studying health science-related
programmes were found to be more cynical than their non-health science
counterparts. Furthermore, overall cynicism was higher among students in Level
300 than in other year groups. The practical implications of the study, its limitations,
and directions for future research are discussed