Competition today has become a central policy imperative in higher education. Connected to resource efficiency and scarcity, it remains closely attached to the idea of the market but reaches beyond when related to positional or status orders. In the higher education literature such varieties of competition -- as distinct social processes -- are…

Understanding students' college enrollment decisions is critical because the admission outcome can affect the school's quality and its reputation. In this paper, we study how students consider their relative academic ability compared to their potential peers. Drawing from social comparison theory, we posit that there are asymmetric effects due to…

This paper analyses the patterns of international student enrolments in Portugal to understand what makes Portuguese higher education attractive. Employing a database of enrolments in Portuguese higher education institutions in 2017/2018, it uses correspondence analysis to characterise the flows of students coming from different countries and the…

The United States has widely experimented with merit-based financial aid to make college more accessible and affordable for its youth. Varying in design and benefits, these state-run programs subsidize college costs for academically meritorious high-school graduates. While broadly linked to higher college attendance the distribution of aid…

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to examine the compensation effect when young students decide among different tertiary education options. We begin with an analysis of the transition to higher vocational training programmes or university degree programmes. For those choosing the university option, we then analyse the risk (high or low) of…

Higher education has witnessed unprecedented changes in the last two decades -- a highly competitive global market, varying nature of work, industry expectations, learning preferences, advancement in technology, and to top it all a pandemic. To sustain and remain competitive Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) have shown an increased interest…

A longitudinal qualitative study of undergraduate women nursing students demonstrated the profound and pervasive influence of the heterosexual intimate relationship on their university engagement and achievement. Hitherto, the importance of women's private lives have been underappreciated in the arenas of student equity and retention. The study…

This study provides an empirical approach to utilizing an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system for identifying students' university choice factors that impact their matriculation decision. We created an AI-based chatbot that gathered both qualitative and quantitative data from nearly 1200 participants worldwide. The entire human-AI…

This paper explores the effect of methodological choice on global Higher Education Institutions' (HEI) rankings, and the effect of choices regarding League Table and Ranking Systems (LTRSs) upon decision-making and policy. LTRSs are identified as heuristics to aid decision-making about HEIs. The paper examines the methodological choices commonly…

This paper challenges the dominant discourse that Higher Education (HE) choice is a consumer choice and questions assumptions underpinning government policy and HE marketing. HE choice is largely viewed as a rational, decontextualised process. However, this interpretivist study found it to be much more complex, and to be about relationships and…

Knowledge of the value generated within higher education institutions is of great interest for various agents, particularly managers, as well as governments and society. University mission statements and their scope complicate any comparable measurement of the effects each university may have within a particular region. Perhaps the most adequate…

When investigating students' motivations to enrol in university, a wide range of elements related to the overall student experience should be taken into account. The current study moves from this point to analyse students' choice factors from a survey completed by 27,504 students across 23 Italian institutions by means of a logistic principal…

Several studies on the access to public higher education in Portugal have analysed the students' migration flows. Those studies, in general, do not consider the micro-level migration decisions of students. This study analyses the students' migration flows by fields of study or programmes, grades, social background and region of origin for a small…

The Higher Education Sector is improving its relationship with graduates due to the economic, social and technological changes that affect universities. We present a consolidated model in this study of both the consequences and the antecedents of satisfaction that are determinative of the formation of loyalty in the university sector. In addition…

University choice is a high-risk decision for prospective students which requires substantial effort to evaluate a range of choice factors. Understanding this complex process is a crucial task for higher education marketers. Of particular importance are the differences across market segments. This study analyses the importance of choice factors,…