An exploration of factors and stages in the process of students choosing to study at a private university in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Abstract Recently, the number of private higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia has increased rapidly despite the dramatic increase in the number of public universities from just 8 universities in 1998 to 26 in 2016. This research aimed to understand why students chose private universities (where they or their families pay fees) instead of public ones (which are free), particularly focusing on the factors that influence students’ choice of private higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. This mixed-methods research was conducted using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews in order to explore the factors underlying students’ choice of a private university. In addition, these methods were employed to understand how those factors interact with the different stages of the students’ decision-making process. This investigation was carried out in the specific context of Saudi private higher education universities with the aim of addressing the paucity of literature that pays particular attention to aspects of students’ choice of university in Saudi Arabia and in order to situate the Saudi context within the global context. (See for example: Sojkin et al., 2012, Liên et al., 2015, Garwe 2014.) To achieve a comprehensive perspective of the topic of the study, a review of the relevant literature was conducted which resulted in a synthesis of the factors pertaining to students’ choice of university, a hypothesised model and a questionnaire and semi-structured interview design incorporating the most influential factors. The study involved a questionnaire completed by 230 student respondents and semi-structured interviews with 20 students at private higher education institutions. Following data collection, factor analyses and correspondence analysis techniques were conducted on SPSS and MAXQDA respectively to analyse the questionnaire and interview data. The qualitative and quantitative results were then discussed in comparison with the previous studies to address the research questions and identify the factors that influenced the student participants’ choice of private higher education universities over public universities. The results of the research determined several factors that can be considered as having the most influence on Saudi private university students’ decision: institutional quality, institutional reputation, individual factors and parent support. In addition, the data driven model confirms that the most important stage of students’ decision-making stages of university was the last stage, namely the ‘Choice’ stage. According to the majority of the students who participated in this study, the two most challenging aspects that faced them during their journey of choosing a university were the ‘weighted ratio’ and the ‘academic requirements’ which reflect student characteristics and institutional characteristics respectively. A detailed discussion further presents a comparison between the quantitative and qualitative findings in this research, the research findings in comparison with the previous studies as well as the implications of the data driven model. The most important contribution of this study was the new and comprehensive model showing a relationship between factors and stages of decision making, unique in higher education literature. The results of this study map out the most influential factors and stages which can help private universities develop their marketing strategies and understand which factors can encourage or discourage students to choose one university over another.