A Study of Factors Influencing Students' Decision to Pursue to Tertiary Education

Abstract

There are many underlying factors that may influence the students to make a decision to further their study in tertiary education which is a key issue for higher education institution authorities to acknowledge. Hence, the main purpose of this research is to identify the factors affecting students' decision in pursuing tertiary education. This research will be focusing on the three factors which are student attributes, social influence and financial consideration. Online questionnaires were being distributed as a primary data to the secondary school students by sharing the link with a sample size of two hundred respondents. A reliability test was conducted after the collection of data to test the reliability of the variables. Multiple linear regression and pearson correlation coefficient were used to measure the relationship between the independent variables and dependent variable. Result of this work showed that motivation, family influence and financial consideration are significantly associated with students' decision in pursuing higher education.