University Selection Process

University Selection Process

Written By: Bahadır Küçükkolbaşı & Hussain Alibrahim

Introduction to Social Science Research

MA in MBA

University of Debrecen

2012

Contents

Introduction 3

The Results Summary 3

Gender Specific 3

International Students Data 3

Studying Abroad and Selecting the University 4

Pre-Joining the University of Debrecen 4

Joining the University of Debrecen 6

Post-Joining the university 7

Financial Matters 9

Future Plans 9

Appendix: 10

Text: 10

The Questionaire: 10

Introduction

The research subject is the international students, it looks to discover why they chose the University of Debrecen, what are the important factors that affected their choice, their selection process in finding out information about the university and if there’s any significant differences between the answers between males and females. The sample size was small, with only 40 samples.

The Results Summary

Gender Specific

The results of the questionnaire showed that 65% of the international students are males and 35% are females, which indicate that the university is more popular with males. In answering the rest of the questions, gender prove to have no significance on most of the results it only differed in two outcomes,

The first one was related to the reason why they chose to study abroad instead of their own country, females answered “to experience a new lifestyle” with higher proportion than males, as males chose this answer with medium proportion. The 2nd question was related to the value of diploma, males results indicated that they found the value of the diploma as they expected, where females were less satisfied as the results indicated that they found it less than their expectation.

International Students Data

The university seem to be popular in Asia, as nearly half (47.5%) of the international students come from there, the international students come from a wide variety of countries that includes Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China, France, Iran, Latvia, Nigeria, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam. Second to Asia was Africa with 35%, students coming from Europe make about 12.5% and 5% of the students refused to declare their country of origin. The country which had the majority share of students was Turkey with 27.5%.

The sample included 25% of students who are in their first year in Debrecen, 40% in their second and 35% in their third, indicating a high retention rate by the university and supporting the value of the results as the questionnaire is answered by more experienced than less experienced international students. The students find that their English knowledge is of a high level as 75% thought it’s good to perfect in listening and writing, 72.5% think the same about their reading ability and 67.5% think their knowledge is from good to perfect in speaking

The students year of birth ranged between 1976 and 1994, the majority were born in 1991 which made about 17.5%, 70% of the students were born between 1987 and 1992, and the mean was the year of 1988. The result indicates that the youngest international student at the university is 18 years old, which indicates that the university can attract international students who directly graduate from high-school and then joins the University of Debrecen.

This indication is strengthen by the result that 50% of the international students were high-school graduates before joining the university, 40% were university students and 10% were university graduates. However, we believe that the last result would decrease if the sample size were to increase.

The 40% of the international students who were university students before joining the University of Debrecen raises the question to why they left their universities, which also leads us to ask why all the students came here, the questionnaire offered many outcomes to choose from, the reason with the highest result was “To Experience a new lifestyle” with 57.5%, the second reason with 27.5% was the difficulty of education in their country, then came the low quality of education in their country with 22.5%.

The fourth most important reason was the Social and political confusion in your country with 20%, 12.5% chose to study a new subject unavailable in your country, High tuition fees in your country and other reasons came last, each with 5%, where one student specified her other reason was the difficulty of the education style in his country.

The tuition fees in your country didn’t seem significant, so to support that claim we asked the students to compare the average tuition fee in their country with the tuition fee of the University of Debrecen, 65% answered that it’s less than Debrecen University, 25% said it’s almost the same, and only 10% said it was higher, this result supported the former question.

Studying Abroad and Selecting the University

When asked when they decided to study abroad, 0% said “At primary School”, 17.5% said “At secondary School”, 30% said “at university level” and 52% said “At high-School”. The result shows that the University of Debrecen was the first choice for 52.5% of the international students, the rest who answered no wanted to go to different universities in 8 different countries.

Mostly wanted to go to the UK with 37%, then the USA with 16%, third came Germany, Switzerland and Canada with 10.5%, with nearly 5.2% France, Turkey and the University of Budapest in Hungary came last. The reasons why they did not study at their favorite university was mostly due to financial factors which 37% of the student chose, the 2nd reason was a rejected Visa application with 26%, Rejected university application came third with 21%, and there was other reasons which made about 16% without specifying what these reasons were.

Pre-Joining the University of Debrecen

So, whether it was their first choice or not they ended up here, so the question is how they heard about the university and how efficient was the information. The channel which seemed to have the highest importance was family or friends as 37.5% of the international students first heard about the university through this channel, 55% actually used this channel and 50% of them thought it’s very efficient way to obtain information about the university.

The 2nd most important channel arguably is the Internet as 27.5% first heard about the university through it, it was the channel of the highest usage to obtain information about the university with 70% of the international students using it, with 70% of them finding it to range from efficient to very efficient. Education counseling service comes in third with absolute results, 12.5% first heard about the university through it, 37.5% used it and 66.6% rated it to be from efficient to very efficient.

The Teacher channel comes in 4th with 5% of the international student hearing about the university through it, 35% used this channel, out of which 40% thought of it as efficient or very efficient and 40% thought that it’s useless or inefficient, the reason for this can be caused due to the inconsistency of the channel as it’s represented by various sources which differ in personality and characteristics.

Other than teachers, 35% of the students used university representative with 57% finding the information to range from efficient to very efficient. This may indicate that university representatives are better than teacher in promoting the university.

School Organization is the next important thing as 5% first heard about the university through it, 32.5% of the students used it and 30% found it to be very efficient, 30% found it to have medium to high efficiency but 40% thought it’s useless or inefficient.

University conference which is similar to a school organization comes in next as it also represented 5% of first hear, it was used with a less proportion, with 27.5%, but its efficiency is in doubt as 35% found it to be useless or inefficient, 30% found it to be of medium efficiency, 35% found it to be efficient and 0% found it to be very efficient.

Magazine or newspaper, Ministry of Education of your country and Other have the same percentage of first hear by 2.5%, so to compare them we need to see their usage and efficiency. Magazine channel seemed more important than the two as its usage was about 35%, 35% of those who used it found it to be useless or inefficient, 35% found it to be of medium efficiency and 30% found it to be efficient or very efficient.

Ministry of Education of your country came as the absolute ninth channel with 27.5% usage with the same efficiency as the Magazine channel. Although 2.5% chose other channels to be the first channel to hear about the university, 0% said that they used this channel and therefore there was no result of its efficiency.

The last channel is TV or radio, 0% indicated that this is the first way they heard about the university, only 17.5% used it and as to its efficiency, the result indicates that it’s split down the middle, 20% thought of it as of medium efficiency, and the 80% was spilt to 40% saying it’s useless or inefficient and the other 40% saying it’s very efficient. The table below gathers the results of the channels.

Ranking / First Hear / Usage / Efficiency
1 / Friends or Family / Internet / Internet
2 / Internet / Friends or Family / Education Counseling
3 / Education Counseling / Education Counseling / Friends or Family
4 / Teacher or university representative / University Representative / University Representative
5 / Magazine or newspaper / Teacher
6 / School Organization / Teacher / TV or Radio
7 / University conference / School Organization / School Organization
8 / Magazine or newspaper / University conference / University conference
9 / Ministry of Education / Ministry of Education / Ministry of Education
10 / Other / TV or Radio / Magazine or newspaper
11 / TV or Radio / Other / Other

Joining the University of Debrecen

The results show that 87.5% of the international students are bachelor students, 7.5% in the Erasmus program and only 5% in the master level. So, our next concentration would be the factors that affected their final choice, we’ve identified 8 factors and added other as an option to choose from. The financial factor had the highest frequency of being very important, but our ranking is based on the sum of percentages of being “important” and “very important” for each factor.

The most important factor according to the survey is the university reputation as it ranged from important to very important for 45% of the sample.

The financial factor played the 2nd most important part in their choice as which supports the former question as to why those who the University of Debrecen wasn’t their first choice didn’t join their favorite university. Here the financial factors ranged from important to very important for 37.5% of the sample.

Third comes is the applying requirements with also 37.5%, but only 10% saw it’s very important where 22.5% found the financial factors to be very important, and therefore we rank it as the third most important factor.

4th is the ease of studying with 35% importance, language 5th with 32.5%, although only 7.5% found it be very important.

Country factors is 6th with 24.5%, level of importance, scholarship was invalid for 25% of the sample and 15% found to be of high importance.

Family connection and other came last on the scale as they ranged to have an importance of 7.5% each, 65% of the sample saw that family connection as “not important” and 85% finding other reasons “not important”. One of those who chose other reasons as important specified that the ability to study two degrees at once was the reason.

The table below summarizes the factors according to their importance.

Importance Ranking / Factor
1 / University Reputation
2 / Financial Factor
3 / Applying Requirements
4 / Ease of Studying
5 / Language
6 / Country Factors
7 / Scholarship
8 / Family Connection
9 / Other

Our last concentrating when considering the joining of the university is the process of joining the university; we have identified four factors which are information access, acceptance exam, application requirements and procedure and visa application.

We can conclude that these factors all belong to the applying requirements, except for visa application which can considered as a country factor, and since our earlier assessment concluded that applying requirements is more important than country factors, then we can expect them to be of easier nature than the visa application.

The results indicate that the easiest of the four factors is application requirements with 52.5% finding it to range from easy to very easy. Then comes in is the acceptance exam and procedure with 45% of the students finding to be easy or very easy.

Visa application is found easy or very easy by 37.5% of the sample where only 35% found information access to be of that nature. However, 22.5% found that information access was difficult where 30% saw that the visa application was of a difficult nature.

Our results in the question support our results in the previous one, increasing the validity of the questionnaire

Post-Joining the university

Our first concentration in this part is whether or not the students believe they made enough research about the university; the results indicate that 50% believe they have while the other 50% don’t. So, what went wrong for those 50%, first we’ll see if they don’t like Debrecen as a city or if they are unhappy with the university.