Abstract:
Gaining higher education is vital for a person to find more lucrative careers pursuing a better professional and personal life growth. In the modern world today, private education institutes play an imperative and a competitive role by opening up many more opportunities for those who are seeking higher education aspirations. At such a turning point of a life, the determinants considered by the students when selecting higher education opportunities in the private institutions are worth to study. The study was carried out with the objectives of identifying the potential students for a particular programme of a private higher education institute in Sri Lanka and to identifying the salient factors which are considered by the students when selecting higher education opportunities in the private institutions. Due to the unavailability of the secondary data source, primary data was collected through a questionnaire survey and descriptive analysis has been carried out to check the relationship between the response variables and other explanatory variables. Due to the availability of colliniarity between explanatory variables and as those variables, factor analysis has been carried out. Hypothesis testing has been carried out for ordinal data using Kruskal Wallis test. As per the major findings, higher studies are more preferred by male students those who have done mathematics for their Advanced Level studies. The main sources, referred for gathering course information are friends and the websites. With reference to the education background and occupation of the respondents’ parents, the most have advanced level qualification, most fathers are government servants and businessmen and mothers are house wives. Parents are the main source of financial contributor for the higher studies of their children. Majority of the respondents live and have studied at Colombo and have gone to national schools. According to the factor analysis, Study Programme, Influence, Accommodation and Attitudes are the determinants considered by students those who are pursuing higher education. According to the Kruskal Wallis test Study Programme depends on gender, programme type (Degree, Advanced Diploma, Diploma, and Certificate) and programme area (Engineering, Medicine, Physical Science, Bio Science, Management and Arts). The Influence depends on programme type and programme area. Accommodation depends on gender, programme type, programme area and type of school. Attitudes depend on programme type, programme area, education of the mothers, district of the school and type of the school.
