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BM013-4-0-ARS INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

2013
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INTRODUCTION
According to J1, the aim of this investigates is to study the cram school service usage
behavior of junior and senior high school students and to compare the factors influencing their
decisions when choosing the cram school. Cram schools in Thailand plays an important role in
education system. Educational competition in Thailand is increasing dramatically which is
important to make sure all the student will get a chance to get into a recognized university, which
in the future after the students get graduated, they will be able to obtain a stable job with a high
income. In Thailand, parents do not believe that education from the schools is enough to prepare
their children to compete with others, thus in order to prepare their children they send their
children to a cram schools at a very young age. The cram school business is prospering in
Thailand as the number of cram schools in Thailand increase by 165 from 2007 to 2009, 325 of
which are located in Bangkok while the remaining 918 are in the provinces. Reasons behind this
prospering business are the belief of parents and also a high increase in educational competition
in Thailand. Even though the cram school business is prospering, it remains highly competitive
because students have a variety of options. The results of this research will enable the
entrepreneurs to know what marketing stimuli attract their customers.
According to J2, the aim of this investigation is to determine factors influencing
international postgraduate students in choosing university in Malaysia. Malaysia is one of the top
countries for educational purposes on the planet.

Based on Ministry of Higher Education

(MOHE) of Malaysia states that students from more than 175 countries are studying in Malaysia.
International students are here not only to continue their undergraduate level, however they are
here to continue their studies in postgraduate level such as Master and Doctoral degrees . The
postgraduate student's independence study is very important to a university, and this will makes
an indirect promotion for the university and also promote a status of the university as a
renowned research university in the world. The managements of all the university should know
the elements needed such as factors that affect students' choice of enrollment in a university and
how these elements are successively organized from the very important to less important. Among
the factors to pursue postgraduate level of study overseas are programs offered, price, promotion,
facilities, prominence, environment, convenience, and scholarship. This investigation is to rank
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BM013-4-0-ARS INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT


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the factors that influencing international students' choice based on the perception of the first year
postgraduate (PG) students in IIUM.
According to J3, the aim of this investigation is to determine the factors that affecting
prospective undergraduates in choosing a university and a course. This research also survey the
important of different sources of information in making the choice. Roughly 20 college
undergraduate students looking at the variables that influenced their decision of university and a
course, and the sources of information that the students used in arriving at their decisions.
Among the factors related specifically to the course after a considerable discussion are the entry
requirements for the particular course, the perceived quality of teaching on the course and the
reputation of the course. Other few factors are further related to the university such as the
position of the university in league tables, the attractiveness of the university campus and the
quality of the sports, library and computing facilities. Finally, there is also some personal factors
that effected their decision towards university and courses. This shows that the main aim of this
investigation is to determine the factors that affecting prospective undergraduates in choosing a
university and also a course.
In the same manner, all the three journals investigates the factors influence students in
choosing university to enable organization to investigate these variables to pull in their customer.
On the other hand, J1 aim is to find out the factors influence the students in Thailand in choosing
cram school, J2 aimed is to determined factors influencing international postgraduates students
in choosing university in Malaysia, and J3 aimed to find out what factors influence
undergraduate students in choosing university and it also measures the relative significance of
factors affecting prospective undergraduates in their choice of university and course. The
variables discussed in these three journals are the content of the course, learning environment,
fees and learning experience. The research work for J1 was carried out in Thailand, discoveries
of J2 was completed in Malaysia while the result of J3 was carried out in England. The results in
J1 is only relevant to high school students in Thailand. In J2, the results is only applicable to
international students who study in Malaysia. While in J3, the findings is only prove correct
when apply on students in England.

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BM013-4-0-ARS INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT


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METHODOLOGY
According to J1, a quantitative research method is used for this investigation. Questions
were distributed to a sample size of 198 junior and senior high school students comprised of
females (56.1%) and males (43.9 %) and 198 senior high school students comprised mostly of
females (71.2 %) and some males (28.8 %). The students that are comprised in this study are the
students from the cram schools at Wannasorn Tower, Bangkok. A Likert scale consisting of 5
levels, ranging from Level 1 for unimportant to Level 5 for most important. This research
employed in order to investigate the factors influencing their decision in selecting cram schools.
To determine the differences of importance between junior and senior high school at the
statistically significant level of 0.05 the Mann-Whitney U test was applied in this research.
According to J2, a quantitative research method is used for this investigation as in J1.
After briefing as many as 135 students about the aim of the research, the students are been
requested to compare the importance based on a theory called (AHP) Analytic Hierarchy
Process. This theory was been choose due to its suitability in evaluating multiple-criteria
decision-making problems (Saad, 2001/ Udo, 2000 / Yang and Lee, 2002). AHP is a device used
to rank the important of alternative based on some defined criteria. Pair wise comparison scale is
a instrument that used for AHP to obtained the respondents' judgments. This was with a
numerical rating of 1-9 as the comparison will always in row-column basic. The rating of 1-9, is
in which 1 equated to "Equally preferred", 5 equated to "Strongly preferred" and 9 equated to
"Extremely preferred". Nation of consistency is also another important consideration in the AHP.
This is important because lack in consistency may specify that the respondents did not
understand the differences in the choices presented or were unable to access accurately the
relative important of the elements compared. Lastly, a rule is that if the value of inconsistency
which is smaller or equal to 10% is acceptable. However, the inconsistency value which is higher
than 10% is unacceptable and need to revise the subjective judgment.

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According to J3, a multi methodology method is used for this investigation. First method
that was used in this investigation is qualitative method which is concentrating on a specific
group of approximately 20 undergraduates students looking at the factors that influence them in
selecting a university and course including the sources of information that they used in making
the decision. Quantitative research is used to test the general applicability of the factor. A sample
size of 235 respondents is involved in the research. All the respondents are first year law
students. There are 110 respondents from University A and 125 respondents from University B.
The method to collect data from both the university is by sending questionnaires to the
respondents. The respondents were asked to enter every variable with a sliding scale of important
from 1-5, where 1 equated to "not important" and 5 equated to "very important". Students was
not limits to the number of factors they could rank. It should be noted that ranking given by the
students from University A tended to be higher than university B.
Based on this three journals, the method that was used in all three investigations is
quantitative research. A qualitative research needs a longer time and more possessions is not
proper in finding results that involve a large number of sample size. A quantitative research
method suits well in J1, J2 and also J3 as the only a few people in a group is needed to generalize
the investigation. Questionnaires approach was used in J1 and also in J3 while in J2 a direct
survey was used. The reason why questionnaire approach was used in J1 and J2 is because it
have a larger sample size compare to J2. Scale is used by all three journals to represent the
significant of each factor such as J1 used a Likert Scale consisting of 5 scales, while J2 used
percentage technique to extract the information. This is significant so that the researcher will
have a clear mind on which factor should come in main concern.

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RESULTS
According to J1, the results of this investigation clearly indicate that in selecting a cram
school the first five factors that persuade the selection of junior high school students toward cram
schools are expertise of instructor (4.34), the provision of learning material (4.28), the intensity
of academic contents (4.26), closeness to a sky train station (4.21), and finally the
comfortableness of a classroom with air conditioning (4.20). On the other hand, in selecting a
cram school the first five differ factors that influence senior high school are being the proficiency
of the teachers (4.46), the intensity of academic contents (4.35), free consultation service for
exam guidelines (4.17), a variety of courses to choose from (4.14), and a location near to the
cram schools (4.14). They have a tendency to cram many courses, so they make a high necessity
of having a variety of course to choose from and an area close other cram schools.
According to J2, there are 78 (57.78%) male and 57 (42.22%) female students are
involved in this investigation. 44.44% of the respondents originated are from Southeast Asia and
40.74% respondents are from Middle East. Another 20 respondents are from Western countries.
The analysis of AHP will be characterized into sex classification that are male, female, Southeast
Asia (SA), Middle East (ME), Western Countries (WC), and overall to find more information
about the university selection criteria by international students in Malaysia. The output of this
investigation shows that the international students have selected "program offered" and "tuition
price" as the top 2 factors influencing them in choosing towards universities in Malaysia.
However, students from Western countries choose prominence of academic staff in a university
as their second factor to be consider in choosing towards universities in Malaysia. The other
factors as scholarships provided, the environment built, and convenience of the physical
appearance of the university are ranked lowest by most of the respondents. the inconsistency
qualities are 0.06, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, 0.04 and 0.07 for the classification of all respondents, male
and female students, SA students, ME students, and WC students, respectively. This prescribes
that the judgments given by respondents are acceptable for all categories. In this manner, no
further assessment is needed.

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BM013-4-0-ARS INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT


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According to J3, the top three factors influencing 235 undergraduates students in
selecting university and course are "the reputation of the course" (4.58), "the position of the
course in league table" (4.30) and "the quality of teaching" (4.29). On the other hand, "university
sports facilities"(2.53), "university cubs and societies"(2.90), and "the students' Union"(2.93) are
ranked as the most least important factors influencing the students. Respondents from University
A think that that "reputation of the university"(4.66), "the position of the course in the league
table"(4.38) and "reputation of the university"(4.35) are the top three factors. However,
respondents from University B think that "the reputation of the course"(4.51), "'the quality of
teaching"(4.32) and "the position of the course in the league table"(4.23) are the top three factors.
Alternatively, students from university A do not give priority to "university sports
facilities"(2.90), "university clubs and society"(3.14) and "recommendation from school and
careers service"(3.16) as these are the three factors at the bottoms of the list. However, students
from University B do not give consideration to the factors such as university sports facilities
(2.20), other university facilities (2.76) and university clubs and societies (2.69) as these are the
three factors at the bottom. Both respondents from University A and B think that university
prospectus is the most important sources of information followed by University visit days.
Conversely, university fairs were the lowest as ranking 2.75 and 2.55 respectively given by the
respondents from University A and B.
Analysis ,

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DISCUSSION
According to J1, the result clearly proven that junior and also senior students are
attending the cram schools is to increase their understanding of their lessons. It is extremely
important for the entrepreneurs to evaluate the teachers capability in order to help students
understand as well as course content. In addition, to be more interactive among administrators
and parents including students, admin of cram schools should provide a suggestion box, e-mail
address, and Facebook or Twitter accounts. This research exposed that students in Thai begin
going to cram school in Primary school. Therefore, admin of cram school must satisfy the
students and also their parents expectations, so that this provide positive word-of-mouth for the
school which is more valuable than advertising or promotion . This research also proves that the
presumption of Napompech and Kuawiriyapan (2010) that the teaching-learning factor and the
place factor both a major role in choosing of a cram school in Thailand. Finally, senior high
school students give more importance to teaching-learning factor compare to junior high school
students.
According to J2,

Malaysia is around the most preferred countries for educational

purposes in the world with more than fifty thousand people from more than 175 countries of
origin. The most important factors in influencing the international students in selecting university
in Malaysia are the programs offered and the tuition price. It is clearly reflecting the awareness
of prospective students towards standard education required from the industry. Therefore
university in Malaysia are suggested to focus on how to set and offer distinctive courses,
engaging distinguished specialists in their various fields and to provide a reasonable tuition fee.
Along these lines, further research are proposed to enhance this field of learning either by
applying the same framework in different areas of universities. At last, it is prescribed that topics
that can be addressed in a future research, for example "how Muslim and non-Muslim students
choose their university " and "elements that determine local and international students to
continue Postgraduate level of study in Malaysia".

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According to J3, the outcome of the investigation is deemed similar to the Law Students
2000 Project. Students consider a wide range of factors and utilize a wide range of information
sources in deciding which course and university they wish for. For so many students, reputation
of the course plays a vital role in influencing them on where to apply. However, researcher cited
findings from the Law Student 2000, stating that 80% of law students think that interest is the
utmost important factor in their decision. Students are very concerned on the marketing of their
qualifications and perhaps that they see undergraduate study as a means to an end rather than as
an end in itself. Most especially is the fact that the university's visit days, website and prospectus
plays an important role in providing information to the students. This is because, students can get
a better understanding of what they are looking for in deciding where to apply and this enable
universities to market themselves more efficiently.
Analysis,

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BM013-4-0-ARS INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT


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REFERENCES

Catley, P. 2004. Which University? Which Course?.Brookes eJournal of Learning and


Teaching, 1 (1), pp. 1-6

Dahari, Z. and Abduh, M. 2011. Factors influencing international students choice towards
universities in Malaysia.African Journal of Business Management, 5 (26), pp. 10615-10620.

Napompech, K. 2011. What Factors Influence High School Students in Choosing Cram
School in Thailand. International Proceedings of Economics Development and Research, 16
pp. 90-95.

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