Students’ choice management: recipe for improving enrollment in private higher education institutions / Som Pal Baliyan and Sello Mokoena

Recent growth in higher education sector globally, and growing competition among higher educational institutions makes it important for education policy makers and managers to understand the latent factors motivating students’ choice of selecting an institution. This study adopted an exploratory and descriptive survey research design to analyze students’ choice factors to choose and enroll into private higher educational institutions. Adopting a combined model of choice, a questionnaire containing 40 choice items measured on a five- point Likert’s scale was used to elicit information from 560 stratified randomly sampled first year students enrolled into private higher education institutions in Botswana. Principal component analysis extracted ten factors of students’ choice as: extra-curricular activities, employment prospects, quality of programs, physical characteristics of campus, peers’ advice, campus accessibility and facilities, advertisement through electronic media and personal contact, financial support and international links, publicity through print media, and cost of study. A ten factor combined model of students choice has been developed combined with the social, economic, cultural and environmental factors. The findings were discussed, concluded and appropriate recommendations were made. Findings can benefit the managers and policy makers to develop appropriate strategies for attracting students, and to improve enrolment into private higher educational institutions.