Bibliography: leaves 83-87.The high failure rate of students at Technikons is of great concern to all who are involved in tertiary education. If the current entrance requirements, which are predominately based on matriculation results, are failing to select successful students, these entrance requirements need to be investigated to determine if they are accurate predictors of success. The research reviews the current entrance requirements to Accounting programmes offered at Technikon Natal, and tests the reliability of these requirements, namely matriculation results, as predictors of success in the programmes. Predictor variables such as overall matriculation results, individual subjects or combinations of subjects are considered. The research used students registered for an Accounting diploma at Technikon Natal from 1996 to 1998. The progress of these students was monitored over the period of three years required to complete the Accounting programmes. Overall matriculation results, measured by Swedish points, and subjects studied for matriculation were used to determine if a correlation exists between these results and the number of subjects passed in each year of study. The overall conclusion is that students who have 26 Swedish points and above and/or Accounting matriculation results of a HG-D or SG-C pass more subjects in each year of the three-year Accounting programme than those students who have not achieved these results. The concurrent study of Accounting, Mathematics and Economics was significant for the second and third year of study. A degree of caution is necessary here as students with lower results were also successful in the completion of the Accounting programmes within three years
