Factors Influencing Students Decisions to Enrollment in Sudanese Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of data mining in educational systems. This recognition makes educational data mining a new growing research community. One way to achieve the highest level of quality in a higher education system is by discovering knowledge from educational data such as students' enrollment data. Many mining tools that aim to discover exciting correlations, frequent patterns, associations, or casual structures among sets of items in educational data sets have been proposed. One of the widely used tools is association rules. In this paper, the Apriori algorithm is used to generate association rules to discover the importance and correlation between factors that influence student's decision to enroll in higher education institutions in Sudan. The algorithm is applied using a student's enrollment data set that was created using a questionnaire and 800 students enrolled in governmental and private sector universities as a sample. This paper classifies factors that influence enrollment into: student's demographic factors and four categories of enrollment related factors (Student and Society, Educational Institution, Admission, and Employment related factors), and determines the most influential factors in determining student's decision to enroll in Sudanese universities. The analysis result shows that the Educational Institution related factors (50%) and Admission related factors (40%) are strongly influencing students' enrollment decision, while the Employment related factors (10%) and Student and Society related factors (0%) have weak influence. The factors out of the 14 Educational Institution related factors that have a high impact are: reputation, diversity of study, quality of education, education facilities, and feasibility.

Üniversite Tercihinin Belirleyenleri Nelerdir? Kırgızistan Yükseköğretim Örneği

“…Family income was also indicated as one of the factors defining acquaintance with universities (Sedahmed & Noureldien, 2019); however, according to the current study, no difference was observed in this factor among representatives of different income groups.…”

Modeling higher education institutional choice drivers: a pre- and in-pandemic study of business schools in India

“…Research by Paul and Pradhan (2019) identified the following variables impacting HE admissions using the factor analysis approach: functional value, customer intimacy, service quality, appurtenant value, image and social value (the six dimensions of service value). Association rule using an apriori algorithm was applied to 32 enrollment-related factors (Sedahmed and Noureldien, 2019) under four categories – student and society (7), educational institution (14), admissions (7) and employment (4) for a Sudanese University. The study revealed that job placement of students and institutional brand value dominate the preference for HE institution choice.…”

The Effect of Education Costs, Promotions, And Facilities on Students' Decisions to Choose to Learn at the Faculty of Medicine, Prima Indonesia University Through Attitude as a Moderating Variable

“…Khalid's study (2015) shows that university reputation, price and promotion/advertising are related to the decision of international students to choose UUM to continue their studies. Previous researchers have also proven that recognition in the form of higher education accreditation ratings, diversity of study programs, and flexible entry requirements have affected enrollment (Sedahmed & Noureldien, 2019). Marketing mix, marketing efforts, channels, and advertising were also found to be important factors influencing college selection by students (Ruslan et al, 2014).…”

“…Clearer target market determination, improved communication and promotion, and better response to student needs and desires are believed to be an effective way out to exist in the competition to recruit new students (Abdullah & Tantri, 2016). Many researchers have studied the factors that influence students' decisions to enroll in higher education institutions (Sedahmed & Noureldien, 2019). The results of the study conducted by Mehboob et al (2012) found that college student selection factors depend on several criteria, including academic quality, facilities, campus environment, and personal characteristics.…”