Admission Behavior of Students into Private University A study of Sylhet City Mohammad Jamal Uddin* Md. Mizanur Rahman** Md. Ashraful Alam*** Abstract Students are the primary concern of any educational institution. Higher Education institutions are now increasingly in competition with each other for students, especially quality students. A Private university runs with its own earnings only, hence it pays more attention toward student admission. Like any other business concern a private university needs to understand its customer (student) needs and wants in order to remain competitive and survive among the flock of higher education providers. Students who get admitted to a university come from various socio-economic backgrounds reflecting different criteria for choosing a university. The main purpose of this study is to explore the factors considered by the students while choosing a university to get admission. In addition, it is also the intention of the research to provide some directions to the university authorities on what areas to focus. This study is carried out by using a structured questionnaire taking sample size of 100 for collecting primary data from first year undergraduate students of different universities located in sylhet city. A number of statistical measures (e.g. descriptive analysis, ANOVA test) have been used to draw a conclusion and offer recommendations. The results show that the influence of parents or guardians, friends in college or existing university, university educated relatives, university admission representatives, academic and university reputation, campus safety, and qualified faculties are the major influencing factors on the admission decision of a student to a specific university. Key Words: Behavior, Higher Education, Private University, Information Source, and Student Needs Introduction The development of a country largely depends on the nature and standard of education especially mass education and higher education. Tertiary level education is one of the important parts of the education system of any country. Education at university levels seek to generate new insight or knowledge through research; offer *Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh **Senior Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh ***Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh 112 Metropolitan University Journal new concepts and ideas on different social and developmental issues anticipate the needs of the economy and prepare highly skilled Human Resources. In these senses, education at tertiary level should be research based, standard and sustainable development oriented. In this context, government had tried from the very beginning after liberation. At the time of liberation (16 December 1971), the country inheritably possessed six public universities four in general sector and two in technical Sector (Mahmudul Alam et al., 2003). Thereafter, Bangladesh government had established only two Public Universities till 1990s. The political situations in the country during the period 1980s -1990s were not favourable to the growth and expansion of higher education. The rapid incensement of population raised the demand for higher education after 1990s which was beyond the capacity of public university accommodation. Public universities also could not procure all the necessary educational materials as early as needed. With a view to solving these problems in the higher education, government has accorded permission for the establishment of private university in the private sector by promulgating the Private University Act-1992. The enactment of this Act in 1992 has marked another major breakthrough in the higher education sector in Bangladesh (Farooqui, 2007). The demand for higher educational opportunities after 1990 seemed to have increased significantly. Consequently, the number of students in the private universities along with public universities has been rising. Private universities in Bangladesh recorded a phenomenal growth after the enactment of the Private University Act in 1992. 21st century makes the private sector as a challenging and fastest growing segment, and higher education is not an exception. Education at private level in Bangladesh within a short period of time (5 to 10 years), has generated a number of private higher education institutions besides less growing public universities in transition of socio-economic and political situations and made the private education sector as an important partner in the arena of higher education (Mahmudul Alam et al., 2003). But the rapid expansion of private universities stimulates competition on quality education and educational expense. As a result, the combined effect is made up of a vibrant education sector with a healthy rivalry among the competing institutions (Ashraf et al., 2009) where student community is the main beneficiary and ultimate gainer is the nation. The major attraction of the private universities is the job-oriented courses they offered and session jam free education. Based on the students’ opinions on universities selected for study is found that private university graduates get jobs faster than public university graduates and there are fewer unemployed private university graduates; and also that their average salary levels are significantly above the salary levels of their counterparts from the public universities(Mahmudul Alam et al., 2003). Alternatively rental campus, guest faculty, limited course offer and high fees charged by the private universities may be the reasons for not attracting merit students. University Grants Commission (UGC) as the apex body of the government for higher education is responsible for funding of public universities. Though Private universities do not get any government assistance in terms of funding but they need to receive approval from the UGC to operate and award degrees. The private sector of higher education, which emerged in the 1990s, is self- financing and at times produces a profit for its Metropolitan University Journal 113 continuation (Mahmudul Alam et al., 2003). Its main source of income is student fees. Some private universities tried to make them different by increasingly devoting considerable time and resources to meet the needs and expectations of students. Some institutions set up branches to reach education at door, while other arrange make up classes in holiday if the schedule classes were not held. The challenge for the management of these institutions is now not only to better meet the students’ needs but also to monitor the changes in students needs over time. Thus the study is an attempt to survey students’ behaviour for selecting a university to get admission. Therefore, this research makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in this area of research and helps university authority to reform their strategy to meet the changing needs of students’ overtime. Research Objective: The core objective of the study is to identify the attributes that students consider before choosing a university. The specific objectives are: I. Describe and compare the extent to which characteristics of the university influenced the students to university choice. II. Describe and compare the sources of information most frequently used by the students to choose a university. III. Compare the level of influence of selected known individuals on students’ predispositions in the university choice process. IV. Provide some suggestions and policies to the authority of the university. Literature Review Attitude is an important concept in research on marketing and behavioral science in the context of making decision. Fishbein (1967) defined attitude as “a learned predisposition of human beings”. Based on this predisposition, “an individual would respond to an object (or an idea) or a number of things (or opinions) either in favourable or unfavourable ways.” Kotler(2000) stated that “an attitude is a person’s enduring favourable or unfavourable evaluations, emotional feelings, action tendencies toward some object or idea”. Since researchers have been studying on the students’ attitude towards the criteria for choosing a university for a very long time, a large body of literature exists on this issue. Several theoretical models have been developed and suggested to describe the factors that influence student’s attitude to choose their study at a specific university. Each of these theoretical models describes the various processes by which a student selects a college or University for their higher education. The conceptual approaches describe the university choice process and factors that lead students to their 114 Metropolitan University Journal university choice can be found in three models as suggested by Hossler et al, (1989), a) Economic models, b) Sociological models and c) Combined models. Jackson, (1982) proposed an economic model which emphasized the rational decision-making process of students and their families, and the variety of ways in which different student’s rated and used the college (university) attributes to make their final Higher Education Institute (HEI) choice decision (Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999). Jackson in 1982 also developed Sociological Models from educational and status attainment research emphasizing on the desire of individuals to pursue a higher education institution. The sociological model specifies a variety