The success of intercollegiate athletics has positively influenced the number of applications and enrollments (Chressanthis & Grimes, 1993; Murphy & Trandel, 1994; McEvoy, 2005) as well as the diversity of student body and alumni donations (Pope & Pope, 2009). In addition, many scholars and college administrators have paid much attention to the factors stimulating students’ college choice process because of the decreased enrollment at some universities (Marcus, 2012). However, there has been a lack of scrutiny concerning intercollegiate athletics in order to explain students’ college choice in higher education. The purpose of the study, therefore, was to identify factors which influences why students choose a certain college. This study extended prior research by incorporating the importance of intercollegiate athletics.
Method:
A total of 251 undergraduate students at a major university in the southeastern region of the United States participated in an online survey. An examination of previous scholarly work in the area of college choices led to the inclusion of 15 previously identified motives counting the importance of intercollegiate athletics in this study. Each motive included in the study was measured by seven-point Likert type scales anchored by strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (5).
Analysis/Results:
Exploratory factor analysis using a principal-component analysis revealed that a five factor model (e.g., college efforts, financial conditions, student characteristics, significant persons, college characteristics) accounted for 70.37 percent of the total variance of the motives. The results of one way ANOVA with repeated measures indicated that there were statistically significant differences found among the extracted factors: F(4, 247) = 56.73, p < .001. For instance, college characteristics (M = 3.78) were the most influential factor for college choice followed by student characteristics (M = 3.68), financial conditions (M = 3.49), college efforts (M = 3.03), and significant persons, (M = 2.99). It was interesting to note that intercollegiate athletics converged on the factor of college efforts while it (M = 3.20) was rated the second highest motive, particularly within this factor. This finding could support the inclusion of the intercollegiate athletics as a communication tool in the context of students’ college choice.
Conclusions:
By understanding a significant role of intercollegiate athletics, college administrators are able to incorporate college sports with other promotional strategies, and further, to design future recruiting plans to attract college-bound high school students. Intercollegiate athletics could be cost-effective advertising in higher education.