FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ CHOICE OF UNIVERSITY; THE CASE OF FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The objective of this research paper was to analyze the factors affecting students’ choice of the university; the case of first-year students’ of the private university in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The researcher thus tried to analyze the applicability of the Chapman model (1981) posits that student college choice is influenced mainly by a series of external influences. Those are the reputation of the university, location, advertisement, tuition fee/ price, peer influence, and family influence was analyzed. Three universities were used to administer this study namely St. Mary University, Unity University, Admass University. A stratified sampling technique was employed with a sample of 261 students and out of which 239 were collected from three higher education institutions. The analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics, and the research outcome clearly indicates that location, university reputation have a positive effect on the university choice decision. Price/tuition fee and peer influence have a negative relationship with student's choice of university. As the finding of the study shows families are not considered as an important factor for student choice of university. Hence, the universities have to work or make extensive research on location while opening a new branch or while entering the education market. Also, they need to work on branding to maintain its reputation and design the best pricing policy to maintain and attract students’ brand preferences. Besides, universities are urged to work solely on students, especially in high school students.