Background:  Higher education plays a critical role in developing educated human capital. The higher educational institutions use to build the knowledge and skills of the students which can possibly increase productivity and growth of a nation, it’s also vital in raising a living standards of the surrounding community. Graduates entering the Ethiopian work market each year are expected to make a significant contribution to the growth and transformation of Ethiopian economy. To satisfy these demands the graduated students need to have desired level of academic competency and skill during their stay in the Higher Institutions.Objectives: To identify the trend of graduated and graduating class students’ academic achievement, to investigate the relationship between independent variables and the academic achievement of graduating class of DDU students.Method: Multi-stage stratified simple random sampling technique was employed to draw a sample of Dire Dawa University graduating class students. All Students who have graduated and graduating class students were considered as the parent population of the study. The data were collected from both secondary and primary sources. Primary data were collected via interviewee administered structured questionnaires. All the data were analyzed by SPSS 20 version. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple linear regression models were fitted to the generated data.Results: Firstly, the study was identified determinants of academic competency of  Dire Dawa University Graduating class students by the year 2010E.C.: study time, mother’s education, religion, motivation, gender, efforts, and first year cumulative grade point average were found out to have significant effect on the academic competency of the graduating class students in Dire Dawa university at the time of data collection Secondly, the study identified the variation observed  in the trends of graduating and first year cumulative grade point in Dire Dawa University. Thirdly, the study was identified the variation observed in the trends of graduation cumulative grade point average in Dire Dawa University. Fourthly, the study was distinguished the mean of graduating and graduation year academic competency of students in DDU.Conclusions: Firstly, based on the study finding we conclude that the mean of graduating year academic competency of students in DDU was 3.03. Secondly, Based on the results obtained from multiple linear regression models we conclude that study time, mother’s education, motivation, efforts, gender, religion and first year CGPA were significantly correlated with the academic competency of graduating class students.

Keywords: Dire Dawa University, Eastern Ethiopia, Graduated students, Graduating Class students, academic competency, and multiple linear regression model.