Factors Affecting Student's Decisions in Choosing Private Institutions of Higher Education: The Case of Botho University

This descriptive and quantitative study was aimed at closely examining the factors that affect student's decisions in choosing PIHE with a more focus on the 2020 first year students at Botho University. The study set out to address three specific research objectives namely, to determine the relationship between perception/institutional characteristics and student choice to further their studies, to determine the relationship between

promotion and student choice to further their studies and, to determine relationship between external influence and student choice to further their studies. To measure the factors that affect students decisions to choose PIHE, a five-point Likert’s scale was adopted. Data analysis was done through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). This involved descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis such as analysis of variance, simple regression, and factorial analysis. The factor analysis revealed three factors which accounted for 58.7% of the variance. These factors are External Influence, promotion efforts and institutional characteristics. The findings indicated that these three factors have the highest influence in students’ decision to enroll into a private institution of higher education and in this case, choosing Botho University. The importance of external influence such as advice from parents, siblings, relatives, alumni, high school friends and high school counsellors was clearly reflected in the study. The second highest choice factor related to promotion efforts and demonstrated that students place more emphasis on choice factors such as campus visit, the influence of institutional publication (such as career booklet, prospectus), availability of the institutional website, Facebook and advertisement on various mediums such as print, television etc. The third highest choice factor related to institutional characteristics and showed that students explore choice factors such as educational facilities, cost of study, employment opportunities of graduates, college reputation and type of academic programme. The Pearson coefficient correlation shows a strong correlation between the three variables of promotional, institutional, and external. The strongest association is between External and Promotional (r =.687), followed by promotion and institutional (r =422) and lastly external and institutional (r =.314). This means the more respondents felt something was important in their external environment, the more likely they were to feel something promotional was also important. This correlation is quite strong. All three factors correlate significantly with each other which shows that if one was to find one very important, they were more likely to find the other two more important. It also means that if one were to find one component not at all important, they were more likely to find the other two not at all important. The study came up with key recommendations for considerations by institutions on policy and practice to attract students.