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Educational institutions are caught between increasing their offer rates and attracting and retaining those prospective students who are most suited to course completion. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of demographic and psychological constructs on students’ preferences when choosing to study in a particular faculty through the application and testing of a student choice logit model based on data collected from a survey of existing students.

Logistic regression techniques were used to estimate the probability of undergraduate prospective students’ choices with reference to a set of variables that allows for the prediction and classification of students (n=304) at an Australian university. Using the estimated coefficients of both student characteristics and psychological variables, probability outputs were constructed to compute the faculty membership for student groups. Outputs were also illustrated via a set of simulation analyses.

The results of the student choice logit model are highly significant suggesting demographic, socioeconomic and psychological variables play a role in the prediction of faculty membership of undergraduate students.

These findings have implications for researchers, educational policy makers and career planners. The study also suggests that these policies should take into account the complexities of multi-attribute influences on students’ decision-making choices.

This research offers an innovative marketing use of logistics regression techniques with application of the student choice logit model through predicting the likelihood of faculty membership in an education context.

Managers in higher education require cost effective ways to attract the optimal number of students. The purpose of this paper is to address that general problem at the college level, and in doing so, it points toward strategies that could also be relevant at university and at national level. Two crucial issues are whether potential students are more influenced by parents or by peers when it comes to choosing a college; and whether spending money on advertising is more efficacious than spending money on making direct contact with potential students. The findings provide essential market intelligence for strategically managing the scarce resources available for attracting students.

Data were gathered through a survey instrument and the partial least squares (PLS) technique was subsequently applied to 314 responses.

Secondary school guidance counselors, followed by current and previous college students were the highlights in order of magnitude for non-marketing information sources for college choice. Social life received the highest loadings among college attributes and phone calls from the admissions office received the highest loading among marketer controlled variables. The results reflect the nature of Chinese culture, which is regarded as being highly collectivist.

The model proposed in this study is applicable to students of sub-degree courses, but may need to be adapted to degree and postgraduate courses students.

This study helps educational managers to identify which factors most strongly influence choice of higher education provider, and as a consequence enable managers to make more strategic use of scarce resources.

This is one of very few studies which employ PLS analysis to discover the key factors that influence student selection of a higher education provider, and one of few studies that focusses on Hong Kong.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how and why differences in gender affect entrepreneurial intention (EI). Although there are many studies in this area, scholars have yet to reach a consensus.

This study uses a survey of students at Malaga University in two stages to introduce a new perspective that links gender and university degree subject with the predisposition towards business creation. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is applied.

Comparing the explanatory power of an additive model and a multiplicative model, this paper confirms that socialisation conditions both men and women in their choice of university studies. Consequently, gender and university degree subject choice are shown to be linked and both affect EI.

These findings provide a starting point for closing the information gap in the literature, but deeper analysis is required to combine other factors, such as international variations and the influence of different education systems on entrepreneurship.

These results are of special value to universities interested in fomenting entrepreneurship in their graduates, allowing them to better propose educational policies and communication campaigns reducing the effect of gender on degree choice.

The contribution of this research is the development of introducing university degree subjects as tied to gender. The study forms one construct together, and not a descriptive variable of the sample selected or as two independent exogenous variables, as is the case in most of the literature in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which differences in the subject of degree studied by male and female university graduates contributes to the gender pay gap in Greece, an EU country with historically large gender discrepancies in earnings and occupational segregation. In addition, the paper explores the reasons underlying the distinct educational choices of men and women, with particular emphasis on the role of wage uncertainty.

Using micro‐data from the Greek Labour Force Survey (LFS), Oaxaca‐Blinder decompositions are employed to detect the extent to which gender differences in the type of degree studied can explain the male‐female pay gap. “Risk‐augmented earnings functions” are also used to examine the differential wage premiums offered to men and women in Greece in response to the uncertainty associated with different fields of study.

It is found that the subjects in which women are relatively over‐represented (e.g. Education, Humanities) are also those with the lowest wage returns. Gender differences in the type of degree studied can therefore explain an additional 8.4 per cent of the male‐female pay gap in Greece. A potential reason for distinct gender educational choices is that women opt for less uncertain educations that consequently command lower wage premiums in the job market.

The findings suggest that the promotion of gender equality in Greece should pay closer attention to removing informal barriers to entry for women in educational fields traditionally chosen by men (e.g. more effective careers advice, work‐experience placements, matching of young girls with professional “mentors”).

The paper is the first to investigate the contribution of individual's field of study to the gender wage gap in Greece. In addition, it includes the first‐ever estimations of “risk‐augmented earnings equations” for that country.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interplay between economic governance and privatization, and how these two instruments affect the entry mode choice of the foreign firm and the social welfare of the host country.

This study constructs a mixed duopoly model wherein one domestic public firm competes with a foreign firm and investigates the influence of economic governance investment on the domestic government’s optimal degree of privatization choice and the foreign firm’s entry mode choice.

This study shows that (1) better economic governance enhances the effect of privatization on output, thus resulting in a lower degree of privatization; (2) the optimal privatization policy of the domestic government is partial privatization irrespective of the foreign firm’s entry mode choice; (3) with optimal investment by the domestic government on economic governance, the optimal degree of privatization is higher under FDI than export, and the host-country welfare is also higher under FDI. In particular, this study demonstrates that better economic governance decreases the threshold of the degree of privatization when the foreign firm switches from export to FDI, implying that better economic governance stimulates the foreign firm to undertake FDI in the host country.

The findings shed some light on both the mixed ownership reform of the SOEs in China and attracting foreign capital inflow to improve the host country’s social welfare.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study constitutes the first attempt to build a theoretical framework to explore how the interactions between economic governance and privatization influence the entry mode choice of the foreign firm.

This paper aims to explore the process that undergraduates go through in selecting universities and courses in the context of an increasingly marketisated higher education (HE) where students may see themselves as consumers.

The process students go through is examined with reference to the services marketing literature and using a qualitative, phenomenological approach with students encouraged to focus on their lived experiences.

Notable was the reported inexperience of students who suggest an apparent focus on peripheral rather than core aspects of the HE service offering and therefore aim to quickly make “safe” choices. Also there is evidence of “satisficing” and of avoiding risks and choosing options which “feel right” rather than following a more systematic decision‐making process which might be expected for such an important decision. Also noted was a tendency to defer the decision to others, including the institutions themselves, and their increasingly seductive marketing approaches.

The study is based on a vocational university with a focus on subjects for the new professions (marketing, journalism and media production). Further studies might consider how far the findings hold true for other types of subjects and institutions.

The paper considers the implications of these findings for universities and their marketing activities, and invites them to both re‐evaluate assumptions that an informed and considered process has taken place, and to further consider the ethics of current practices.

The paper's focus on the stories provided by students provides new insights into the complexities and contradictions of decision making for HE and for services in general.

Mature graduates′ reasons for choosing degree courses and subsequent careers are examined, focusing on their destinations after graduation. The study is based on replies from 1,345 older graduates who completed full‐time degree courses in 1987 and 1989. The findings show that the prime motivator for choosing courses was interest in academic subjects, while the most important consideration in choosing a career was job satisfaction. Mature graduates are more inclined than younger colleagues to pursue postgraduate study and public sector employment. The majority of the respondents were satisfied with career progress to date and optimistic about future prospects. They indicated that they felt religious and voluntary organisations, education authorities and local government were more favourably disposed towards older candidates, while they gave public utilities, the media, financial and commercial organisations a low rating. Their recommendations included the abolition of age limits, specific mention of mature graduates in brochures, application forms amended to suit their needs and better selection interview training for interviewers.

Career indecision plays a major role in the way students perceive their future career prospects and how they approach these prospects. In addition, career indecision influences career‐related thoughts and decisions, and plays a role in the way students formulate career goals. A convenience sample from honours students in Accounting Sciences, Financial Management, Economics and Marketing was drawn and their levels of career indecision were measured using self‐administered questionnaires. The study demonstrates that differences exist between students whose employment status differs, and those who were studying for different degrees. Consequently, this study has vital implications for groups (such as career counsellors and educational institutions) involved in the career decision‐making processes of university students.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the low placement participation rate among international students compared with UK students, by examining the impact of individual factors such as gender and domicile and academic achievement such as prior academic qualification, prior academic results and subsequent academic results on students’ choices of degree programmes as well as their graduation status.

This study adopts a quantitative approach by using 268 accounting and finance students in a UK university.

The analyses show that UK students on entry are 35 per cent more likely than international students to choose a degree programme with a placement module after controlling for individual and academic differences. Among females, international students who switch to a degree without placement following entry significantly and statistically underperformed their UK counterparts who complete a degree with placement from the first year onwards. This trend is not observable among male students. Instead, male students who select and graduate with a degree without placement are the worst performers, regardless of their nationalities.

The quantitative data used here are collected in a UK institution so the results reported here may lack generalisability.

International students need to know more about the benefits of undertaking placements on their academic performance and the development of generic skills before entry. Moreover, UK universities need to provide more assistance to international students, especially females about how to secure placements and how to widen their search for potential placements.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explain the low participation rate among international students in UK higher education.