A study on the factors influencing university selection of high school students in Vung Tau city
Abstract
In fact, in order to attract more and more students, institutions of higher
education need to stand how students select colleges and universities (Kotler and Fox,
1995). Understanding the choice process of a university is an instrument with high
potential for developing universities marketing strategies (Plank and Chiagouris 1997).
Although many studies have tried to investigate which criteria students use to select a
college or university, few have tried to analyze this through a model that allows the
interaction of all these criteria.
In general, the purpose of the study was to investigate into the factors
influencing high school student‟s choice of university in Vungtau City with the aims to
ascertain and explore as to how Vungtau high school students who aspire to embark on
higher studies make their choice of university and why they choose one kind of university
over the other (public or private university).
A mix mode methodology was employed in this study, with both quantitative
and qualitative methods serving different purposes in sequential phases. A focus group
was conducted to guide the development of the data collection instrument used in the
actual study. A pilot test was carried out to ensure the validity and reliability of the datagathering instrument – the questionnaire was developed and distributed to high school
students, who are living and studying in Vungtau City
The total sample includes 252 respondents. Further, the returned
questionnaires were analyzed by using factor analysis, EFA, Cronbach‟s Alpha, One-way
ANOVA Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis in SPSS. Then, some suggestions and
recommendation will be proposed in order to figure out a better path for development of
higher education system in Vietnam.
Finally, the result illustrates that there is only element „level of capacity‟ can
be a good predictor for type of university selection of high school student.