John K. NdirituMukirae S. NjihiaAttakumah, Daniel2023-08-042023-08-042023-05http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/26541A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Educational Planning and Economics of Education) School of Education and Lifelong Learning Kenyatta University, May, 2023The socio-economic development of a country is to a large extent based on the research capacity of a country while research capacity of a country depends on the quality and quantity of research outputs a country produces which include research graduates. A country must therefore facilitate the training of more research graduates in research institutions. Studies have, however, shown that postgraduate research degree study completion and graduation rates are low in many countries and needed to be improved. Empirical evidence shows there is internal inefficiency in postgraduate research degree programmes in Ghanaian public universities. This study sought to establish the extent to which educational inputs predict internal efficiency in postgraduate research degree programmes in Ghanaian public universities. The study sought to achieve three objectives which are; to determine the extent to which endogenous inputs use predict study completion and graduation rate in postgraduate research degree programmes in Ghanaian public universities, to determine the extent to which exogenous inputs predict study completion and graduation rate in postgraduate research degree programmes in Ghanaian public universities, and to establish the difference between study completion and graduation rate of postgraduate research degree students who use endogenous inputs in humanities departments and those who use endogenous inputs in the applied science departments in Ghanaian public universities. The study was anchored on education production function model. The study adopted the correlation research design and was conducted in Ghana. The study was carried out at the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. The study had a target population of 3,382 and a sample of 338 respondents from nine applied science departments and 16 humanities departments. The sample comprised of 255 research students and 83 research graduates. Proportionate, stratified random, and snowball sampling techniques were used in this study. The study used questionnaire and documents analysis guide to collect data. Questionnaires were administered to research students and research graduates while the document analysis guides were administered to the universities administrations. Descriptive statistics used in analyzing data were percentages, means and standard deviation while inferential analyses were principal component analysis (PCA) and principal component regression (PCR). The hypotheses were tested at a p <.05 alpha level of significance. The study found that endogenous inputs uses are statistically significant predictor of mean graduation rate of research students and graduates (R2=637). Faculty and research students’ interactions as well as the use of library and department reading resources were the endogenous inputs use components that significantly predicted research students mean graduation rate. The study found that exogenous inputs components are also a statistically significant predictor of research students graduation rate (R2=.725). The study further found that research students in the humanities had a significantly higher mean graduation rate than students in the applied sciences. The study concluded that endogenous inputs use and exogenous inputs account for high levels of variations in research students’ graduation rates. The study recommended among others that policies should be crafted to improve endogenous inputs use in order to improve on graduation rate in Ghanaian public universities.enEducational InputsPredictorsInternal EfficiencyPostgraduate Research DegreeProgrammesGhanaian Public UniversitiesThesis