By: Todd Long
Submitted: 2010-09-08 16:40:15 | Word Count: 801
The decision to attend a college or university and admission to an institution of higher education has important outcomes for individuals and for society. Most of the attention given to these decisions by researchers and by public policymakers has focused on how high school graduates (often referred to as traditional-age students) make their decisions. Attention has also been given to how the institutions make their decisions about the applicants they admit. There are many good reasons for the attention that has been given to these decision-making processes. It is clear that individuals, society, and colleges and universities benefit when more students choose to continue their formal education after high school. Economists have demonstrated that individuals who graduate from two-year and four-year colleges and universities typically have better jobs and incomes. College graduates are healthier and their quality of life is usually better. Society also benefits in a number of ways. Citizens with college degrees pay more taxes, vote more often, and contribute more to the civic life of a democratic society. Colleges and universities also benefit from students who enroll, namely, the contributions that students make to the intellectual and social life of each campus and the tuition dollars students and their parents pay to both public and private institutions. Public colleges and universities also benefit from the public funds that states provide to educate their citizens.
Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the 1990s, there was a precipitous decline in the number of high school graduates. As a result, colleges and universities became more interested in understanding the factors that influence college choice. During the same time period, public policymakers focused more of their attention on encouraging lower-income and moderate-income high school graduates to pursue additional education after high school. These developments have stimulated a significant increase in the amount of research conducted on the
college search and selection process.
Defining the College Selection Process
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Since the 1980s the college selection process has become known as the student college choice, or the college choice process. The college choice process is complex and evolves over several years. During this longitudinal process individuals develop aspirations to attend a two-year or four-year college or university. After developing post–high school educational plans, individuals begin to gather information about the kinds of colleges or universities in which they might be interested, and finally they decide which institution to attend.
The college selection process for traditional-age students is often described as a three-stage process. The first stage is predisposition, which refers to the development of formal educational plans after high school. The second step is the search stage: the process of gathering information about colleges and universities as well as developing a list of colleges or universities to seriously consider. The final stage is called choice and refers to the final decision regarding which institution to attend.
Several researchers, such as Don Hossler and colleagues (1999), have devoted considerable attention to the college choice process. A number of factors and experiences can influence the predisposition stage of college choice. Most high school students have formulated their plans to continue their formal education after high school by the eighth or ninth grade. The most important factor that influences the decisions of students is extent to which parents consistently encourage their children to continue their formal education after high school. In addition, for children of parents who have attended college there is an increased likelihood of college or university attendance after high school graduation. High school students who earn better grades and who have friends who are planning to attend a college or university are also more likely to aspire to continue their formal education after they graduate. Finally, community norms and values also influence the development of postsecondary educational aspirations. Some communities value education more than others and these values are transmitted in subtle and complex ways to youth.
The search stage involves two simultaneous processes. One of these processes involves students learning more about the characteristics of different types of colleges and universities. The other part of this phase involves learning more about which specific institutions to seriously consider attending. Most students who are college bound enter the search stage during their junior year in high school. Some students start earlier and some wait until their senior year. This stage of the college decision-making process is complex. Not surprisingly, the students who spend more time investigating college options are more certain and confident about their deliberations during the search stage. Students from more affluent families and who earn better grades spend more time searching for college alternatives. It is also true, however, that students who earn better grades and who have parents who attended college are less certain about the kind of college or university they will eventually attend–more choices can create more uncertainty.
