THURSTONE INTEREST SCHEDULE AND NATIONAL CAREER ASSESSMENT EXAMINATION: BASIS IN CHOOSING A CAREER PATH IN COLLEGE OF THE SENIOR

HIGH SCHOOL OF TAGAYTAY CITY SCIENCE NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

Amparo Christine Recon-Panganiban

COLLEGE CHOICE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2009 By: Christine Joy Tan

INTRODUCTION

The crucial significance of the college choice decision to a persons life and future cannot be overstated (Canterbury, 1999, p. 26). According to Boyer (1987), in choosing a college, one of lifes major decisions is being made. A lot of time, money, and effort will be involved. The shape and quality of the students life may rest on the outcome (p. 287). Research on college choice has provided additional insights in this area. Yet, as Liu (2005) and others have observed, Most of the studies in college choice were conducted in the United States and other Western countries like Australia . . . and some European countries (p. 18). The reality is that research on the college choice of students in the Philippines is limited. College choice research also has implications for the recruiting strategies of colleges/universities.

Statement of the Problem

A major high school in the Philippines had recently launched into the higher education arena, by starting its own college. The aim was to recruit half of its college students from its high school base. As competition from area colleges/universities was stiff, administrators of the fledgling college needed an understanding of what their high school seniors were looking for in terms of higher education institutions. Unfortunately, research focused on the college choice of students in the Philippines was limited. A better understanding of how high school seniors evaluated the relative importance of major college choice factors would aid this college in recruiting students from its high school base.

Purposes of the Study

The first purpose of this study was to describe the relative importance of major college choice factors (as identified in United States research) to high school seniors in the Philippines, who were in the search and choice phases of their college selection process. The second purpose was to determine whether there were statistically significant differences in the relative importance ascribed to these major college choice factors (i.e. academic quality, college marketing, cost and financial aid, friends, guidance counselors, future job opportunities, location, parents, pastor/religious adviser, programs of study, religious emphasis, security, and social atmosphere), according to demographic attributes of the students (i.e. academic ability, socioeconomic status, gender, educational aspirations/expectations, race/ethnicity, fathers educational level, mothers educational level, religion, and friends/peer influence).

Research Design

This study employed a nonexperimental, quantitative research design. Specifically, both the descriptive and correlational research designs were used.

FINDINGS

All of the major college choice factors surfaced in U.S. literature were important, to some degree, in the Philippine context. However, students placed more importance on some factors (e.g. future job opportunities, programs of study) than on others (e.g. friends, guidance counselors). That the cost and financial aid factor was not ranked more highly in importance was somewhat surprising, considering that this was a top factor in U.S. college choice research (Paulsen, 1990, pp. 47-48; Broekemier, 2002, p. 34; Cabrera and La Nasa, 2000, pp. 9-10). That students ranked their parents higher than other people (e.g. pastor/religious adviser, friends, guidance counselor) coheres with U.S. research. The low ranking of guidance counselors in this study seems to differ from U.S. college choice research, in which these people are identified among the factors consistently influential in the search and choice phases of students college choice process (McDonough, 1997, p. 4).

CRITIQUE

Revision of the TITLE Larger scope of respondents Limit the VARIABLES correlational study is not applicable between major U.S.college choice factors to Philippine high school seniors