Effect of Internet Access on Academic Performance of Undergraduates: An Application of Ordered Probit Model

Abstract

Provision of internet access facilities has very important role in enhancing the academic performance of the undergraduates in the universities. This study explored the access of internet and its impact on the academic performance of undergraduates in University of Vavuniya. A questionnaire was used to gather data from 158 first- year, second- year and third, and fourth year students in the faculty of business studies through random sampling during the period of June, 2025. The collected data were analyzed using frequency statistics, and ordered probit regression model. Among the students, 70.3% of them are females and rest of the 29.7% of them are males and they spent 4.8 hours per day to access the internet. Results of frequency for GPA revealed that, 44.3% of the students got the GPA between 2.01 to 3.00 while only 26.6%of them got the GPA range between 3.31 to 4.00. Out of four types of online tools, 65.8% of them used all four tools such as Google, LMS, You Tube, Zoom and only 5.7% of them used zoom to access the internet. The students are facing various challenges to access the internet and out of them, 46.8% of them told as internet speed is very slow and 17.1% of them told as internet connection is not stable, 16.5% and 14.6% of them told as they spent higher cost for data card and difficult to learn by internet access respectively. In order to identify the impact of internet access on academic performance of undergraduate students, ordered probit model was applied in the study. Its results revealed that, types of internet connection which represents the usage of both mobile data and Wifi, issues of internet connection significantly influencing the academic performance of the students. Findings of this study will be very helpful for undergraduate student to recognize the impact of internet access and its usage on the academic achievement and performance.