The role of perceived campus climate in students’ academic achievements as mediated by students’ engagement in higher education institutions

Campus climate, student engagement, and academic achievement are three critical issues in higher education institutions. In this study, perceived campus climate measured the experience of students on a campus; engagement measured the degree of students’ academic and extra-curricular involvement, while academic achievement was usually measured by the cumulative grade point average. Addressing this issue requires rethinking the current practices and improving them. Therefore, the study’s general objective was to investigate the mediating role of students’ engagement on the relationship between perceived campus climate and academic achievement by taking the Study-Demand-Resources (SD-R) model as a theoretical framework. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to validate both perceived campus climate and students’ engagement scales. The study participants were 412 regular undergraduate students of Bahir Dar, Debre Markos, and Injibara Universities, Ethiopia. These students were selected using a simple random sampling and an independent chance of being selected for each student. A cross-sectional research design was employed. Consequently, the study discovered that the mean scores of students’ perceived campus climate and engagement ranged from moderate to high. The correlation output informed that perceived campus climate, student engagement, and academic achievement are positively and significantly correlated. The path analysis using Lisrel 8.7 indicated that student engagement played a mediating effect on the association between perceived campus climate and academic achievement. The study revealed that perceived campus climate and student engagement were noteworthy factors related to academic achievement. Finally, researchers offer theoretical and practical implications and recommendations in line with our study findings.