Determinants of high school graduates' choice of faculty

Abstract

High level of competition sets new goals to institutions of higher education connected to new reality of students as service users, so there is a need to create adequate enrollment management. This concept includes different marketing activities oriented towards forming strategy of attracting and withholding as great number of new students as possible. Analyses in this paper are related to reveal factors that have the most important influence on decision making about enrollment and to point to elements university institutions should pay attention to as to formulate their adequate marketing activities. Investigations were performed using survey techniques applied to a sample of four-class high school in the town of Sombor, Serbia. The survey consists of 36 open or closed questions connected to marketing activities, influence of referent groups on attitude formation, equipment and curricula of faculties. Likert's scale was used along with Cronbach's alpha coefficient to measure reliability. Main component analysis was applied to measure interdependences; mutually correlated variables were grouped into seven elements, like offer of the faculties, service environment and image, social networking, influence of parents and the media, promotion activities, prices and influence of friends. The first three factors were found as most important.