What Factors Influence High School Students in Choosing Cram School in Thailand

Table of Contents

1.0 INTRODUCTION 2 2.0 METHODOLOGY 4 3.0 RESULTS 6 4.0 DISCUSSION 8 5.0 REFERENCE 10

1.0 INTRODUCTION
From the information and research provided in the three journals: [J1, “What Factors Influence High School Students in Choosing Cram School in Thailand?”], [J2, “Who and What Influences Choice of University Perceptions?”.], [J3, “The Determinants of the Choice of University by Foreign Business Student in South Africa”] we have come to an understanding that education sector is booming and is a vital industry for the development and prosperity of the nations and the people living in it but in this modern era it also requires modern and effective marketing strategies in order to thrive in the competitive world of education sector amongst variant universities all over the world .
Education today is an important and compulsory insignia in our societies especially in those parts of the world where it has not evolved with time as it should have been. It is also a growing industry in all parts of the world starting from kindergarten to the tertiary level. Parents and students today are much more awarded than they used to be few decades ago and realize the significance of a good education in their lives and how a good education from a reputed and well placed university can help them prosper in their professional careers.
The education industry in Thailand is growing rapidly, both the government and the people want to invest in this rapidly growing sector the demand for institutions has increased and so has the competition between these academic institutions. According to the Office of the Private Education Commission, 1,243 tutorial schools across the country in 2009 increased 1,078 tutorial schools in 2007. Students today are not relying on the orthodox methods of choosing a college or university for themselves and the tertiary education providers are now developing and opting for more influential sources to attract international students. South Africa has come very far in developing new strategies and providing a state of the art education system to attract foreign students and to encourage them to opt for their universities. Today the universities in South Africa with the assistance of their government are successful to some extent to scoop a handsome amount of international students from the international market segment where it is facing competition with other education lords like USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It has to keep on developing and introducing modern and innovative techniques and strategies to attract international students who now not only rely on the education standard but also other factors relating to their studies in an international institute.
The marketing done to expand the number of students in a particular university is itself an independent field in this era and the universities have to come up with something extra ordinary and exclusive ideas in order to charm the students who think of getting a modern and more “global” education experience. (Word count: 470)

2.0 METHODOLOGY

J1.
The J1 looks for the factors which are influence students in choosing cram school in Thailand. Thus, research methodology in this journal includes a Likert scale consisting of 5 levels, ranging from Level 1 for unimportant to Level 5 for most important to investigate these factors. This kind of research considered as quantitative method. The sample population is comprised of high school students in cram schools at Wannasom Tower. The sample size is 396 students of which 198 are junior high school students and 198 are high school students collected from the questionnaires. The main objective of the Mann-Whitney U test was to determine the differences of importance between junior and senior high school at the statistically significant level of 0.05. The data collection method is a process that is systematic and objective in its ways of using numerical data from only a selected subgroup of a population to generalize the findings to the population that is being studied.
J2.
The data for the research about the factors which are influence on university choice decision in this journal were collected with a paper survey. These questions comprised about 20% of the content of a survey instrument and the remaining items were part of a different project and were unrelated to this research. The list of items was revised after a pretest with 20 respondents and it’s based on the personal judgment of the author. It means that for this research it used the qualitative methodology approach. The sample population of the undergraduate students at the University is comprised approximately 6400. The mean age of the population which is 21.8 years actually very close to the mean age of the sample which is 21.5 years. The data collection method in this kind of the research had been made with giving the survey form and asking to complete it and return it while the field researcher waited. The responses were anonymous, with no identifying data. The researchers choose respondents among the students.
J3.
The research in J3 had been conducted to find the determinants of the choice of universities by foreign business students in South Africa. It used quantitative research methodology and the data was collected through self-administrated questionnaires in a survey. Quantitative research involves obtaining data from a large group of respondents and is used in descriptive studies to quantify data and generalize the results from the sample to the target population. The population comprised of 304 obtained from the registration department of the University. The study used the non-probability sampling technique where subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility to the researcher. The questionnaire consisted of two sections where the first one elicited demographic information from the respondents that was considered necessary to achieve the purpose of the learning. The second part of the questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Self-administered questionnaires are research questionnaires personally delivered to the respondent by the interviewer but completed by a respondent with no interviewer involvement.
Analysis.
The similarity of journals is in using of questionnaires to collect data. Also, each journal uses Likert scale to determine exact level of the satisfaction of the students. There are some differences among journals as well. It is quite specified technique in the J3 which makes data collection more reliable and trustworthy whereas J1 and J2 do not emphasis on the reliability. (Word count: 563)

3.0 RESULT

The data present in the three journals differ from one another in content and factors affecting students to choose their universities or institutions for their tertiary level education across the world. However the results deduced from these researches shows the psychology and preferences of the students all over the world when it comes to choosing a university which is in fact quite similar amongst all the students irrespective of their origins. The research provided in the three journals is supported by different modes of information and factors i.e. questionnaires conducted in University of Forth Hare South Africa [J3, “The Determinants of the Choice of University by Foreign Business Student in South Africa”], data collected from American Journal of Business Education-Oct’10(Vol.3 No.10)[J2, “Who and What Influences Choice of University Perceptions?”.] , paper surveys conducted in Thailand near Sky Train Station[J1, “What Factors Influence High School Students in Choosing Cram School in Thailand?”] . The study and data collected in [Journal 1] shows the factors affecting the junior and senior high school students of Thailand choose their cram schools. The junior high school students mostly are not able to decide for themselves they are not very critical when it comes to choosing of their cram schools and instead rely on the initiative and decisions of their parents they are concerned about less important factors like closeness to sky train station, comfort provided in the class, expertise of their resource persons and provision of learning material whereas the senior high students are more concerned about the intensity of the learning content, the proficiency of their teachers, free consultation about exam guidelines and variety of courses offered by the academy. However they have similar take on teaching and learning factor and the location of the cram schools. The statistics provided in [Journal 2] is a study about the marketing factors which influences the international student body to join a particular university. It is comprised of two data types one is based on the students and the other on the university employees. There were a number of factors included for choosing a university but only the first seven factors were taken into an account from which the most important or the first ranked factor was the University’s faculty/staff/coach according to students but to employees it looked like a less significant factor and they may have underestimated the influence it has on the prospective students same was the case with the ‘visit to campus’(ranked 3rd according to students and 10 by the employees) the employees may have taken these two factors lightly but the data showed that it mattered to students a lot. The other factors in order of preferences by the students poll were mother’s influence(rank 2nd),father’s influence(rank 4th ),friend at the university (ranked at 5th),student friend in high school (rank 6th ) and other family member influence (rank 7th) .The data considered in this study is of 2005 and therefore shows little influence of digital media, Facebook/MySpace and other social networking sites but as of today it will surely have an impact on how students choose their universities and it may alter the ranks provided in the research.(Mattson & Barnes,2009) shows that about 85% of colleges reported using social media as a source of recruiting students in 2008 compared to the 51% in 2007 which clearly shows the influence of digitalization amongst students. The study also shows that print media or paper mail from the university has its own significance and influence on prospective students. In [Journal 3], research based in a university in South Africa, comprising of international students was dependent on the factors such as the availability of financial assistance, information, quality, attractiveness, diversity, facilities, opportunities and social life. The earlier mentioned factors are illustrated in the manner of preferences by the students deduced from the data collected through a questionnaire. It shows that the international students are less concerned about the repute of the institution than the availability of financial assistance and other factors. The universities today have a task to critically analyse and understand the needs of the students and to achieve those requirements so as to expand the number of their student body and keep on prospering and meeting the standards needed in this modern and scientific age.
(Word count: 709)

4.0 DISCUSSION

As the results showed, that the most important reason of students to go to cram schools is to increase the understanding level of their lessons. Also, the entrepreneurs and the administration should provide maximum comfort for the students like to evaluate the teachers who can explain the course content in a best way and give the suggestion boxes or e-mail addresses to complain directly to administrators. The convenient location and teaching-learning factors also play the important role on choosing cram schools in Thailand. And the last thing is that if the cram schools entrepreneurs satisfy the all of the students needs, they will continue their education in the cram schools and as the study demonstrated, that in general senior school students study more hard and they are more serious than the junior high school students. In journal two, we can see the the context of student choice of university and the influence of various sources of information on their decision to study at a university. The investigations showed that the students visit to campus was the highest rated non-family source of information. Furthermore the results showed that parents played the most significant role in influencing the decision making of choosing a university. Universities are faced with a new ways of communicating with prospective students and their influencers. Emerging communication via social media will continue to change the way of communication of marketers with prospective students. Journal three shows the choice of universities by foreign business students in South Africa. In Addition, the financial assistance such as tuition, hostels, scholarships have got the highest rank of influence among foreign students. Indeed, As well as you know, this university has the lovable physical design and the well-maintained of buildings and they in fact they have great quality of lecturers or general staffs and the university facilities which plays a significant role in choosing a university. An additional factor which is also very important is the social factors which is social clubs, sporting, social activities, communication campaigns and leisure activities. The limitation appeared in this study was the sampling population taken during the surveys. The data were also limited by business students only among the respondents from different courses or degree programmes. Among the journals which were written above, there is some general things which has each journal. For instance, in all of them , we can see that in each journal the students are influenced by their parents to enroll the university. Besides that, J1 and J2 showed that quality of lecturers and their capability on helping students were important in both of them. Other than that, in J1 and J2 location factor and the facilities factor in universities are considered like very influence in students choise to make them feel more comfortable. Finally, the last thing focused on all three journals were suggested to improve the weaknesses and find a new way to make the university to become the first choice among all universities. (Word count: 493)

5.0 REFERENCE

I. Tatenda C. Mubaira & Fatoki O., Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, The Determinants of the Choice of Universities by Foreign Business Students in South Africa, Vol. 1 No. 8 p. 9-21. Accessed on: [28th Feb 2013] II. Timothy C. Johnson (2010) American Journal of Business Eduction. Who And What Influences Choice of University? Student And University Perceptions. Vol. 3 Number 10, p. 2-9. Accessed on: [28th Feb 2013] III. Nampompech K. (2011) What Factors Influence High School Students in Choosing Cram School in Thailand, Internation Conference on Business and Economic Research IPEDR Vol. 16, p. 2-5. Accessed on: [28th Feb 2013]

Name | TP Number | Task | Consultation Record | Abay Mussyrmankulov | TP028555 | INTRODUCTION | | Adil Zhaxylykov | TP029709 | METHODOLOGY | | Dmitriy Sirotkin | TP029620 | RESULTS | | Fagan Rzabeili | TP029475 | DISCUSSION | |