This study examines the performance of a sample of 900 students who graduated in 2004 from the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies. This analysis of student performance is conducted against the background of considerable changes in tertiary education systems. These changes are requiring universities to place much greater emphasis on self-study, and on ensuring that they are performing efficiently in all areas, including the area of student transformation, which is an area of performance linked, at least in part, to academic results.

It is widely agreed that the scholarship of online education is not on par with the delivery of online education. This view is expressed given the increasing rate of technological developments, as well as the various pedagogical techniques and our inability to clearly understand the impact of various techniques on students’ performance. Although online education is gaining in popularity, there is the perception that it is inferior to other modes of delivery; but a major university in Jamaica has instituted numerous initiatives which seek to dispel this perception.

This paper investigates the impact of class attendance on student performance in an Intermediate Microeconomics class at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona. The UWI is the foremost and most prestigious university in the Anglophone Caribbean. It serves 18 countries and territories across the West Indies. No other study has explored this relationship in this area of the world. The author controls for a large number of student characteristics as well as the university characteristic class size.