Facebook Engagement and Student Preferences for Universities

Studies have shown that strong social media presence may lead to higher levels of public engagement and a university’s social media presence on a popular platform such as Facebook may be an indicator of higher enrolment numbers. Yet, no studies have explored the link between universities’ level of Facebook engagement with student enrolments. To address this gap, we assessed the level of Facebook engagement based on the total number of “Likes”, “Comments” and “Shares” given to all the posts on universities’ official Facebook sites between 2016 and 2021; and developed 27 nested Structural Equation Models including additional observed exogenous variables such as Group of Eight membership status and Global Ranking of universities. We found that the Likes, Shares and Comments aggregated by the Facebook posts can be a strong indicator of the level of a university’s Facebook engagement and that universities need to consider both the first and total preferences of students whilst assessing student enrolments. Through these indicators on their Facebook sites, universities can predict forthcoming years’ student enrolments and develop a pertinent financial plan for budgeting and resource allocation in advance.