Abstract
Various research across the world has been carried out to understand how students select their preferred universities for tertiary study; however, there is a shortage of insight from an African perspective. Specifically focusing on a federal university in Nigeria, this study aims to explore factors influencing students’ interest in the school and why they selected it as their study location. A structured questionnaire from undergraduate students was used to understand these choice factors. The study found that personal interest greatly influenced students’ decisions, followed by parental influence, university reputation, university ranking, and fees. This would enable stakeholders working in the Nigerian education sector including academics, administrators and practitioners and international collaborators to understand the most effective ways to reach out to prospective students and draw useful lessons for universities’ marketing strategies, which could be recommended not only in Nigeria but in Africa at large.
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19 August 2020
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References
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Acknowledgements
The authors will like to appreciate the students of the Federal University of Technology, Akure who participated in our survey. We also thank the Deputy Director of Public Communications of the university (FUTA), Mr Adegbenro Adebanjo, for his support towards the project. We thank Tajudeen who assisted with administering the questionnaires and Adetula Olaoluwa for assisting in inputting the data.
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Adeyanju, S., Mogaji, E., Olusola, J.A., Oyinlola, M.A. (2020). Factors Influencing Students’ Choice of a Federal University: A Case Study of a Nigerian Federal University. In: Mogaji, E., Maringe, F., Ebo Hinson, R. (eds) Higher Education Marketing in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39379-3_6
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