The article by Scott Carlson entitled
Analyzing How Students Choose Colleges Is Key Topic at Meeting of Planners, reports on the results of a very interesting study among prospective university students in Canada conducted by Ken Steele at the Academica Group Inc. While the study is quite comprehensive, and the concept of clustering perspective students is fascinating and something that should be looked into in the United States, the clustering results from the Canadian study should not be viewed as applicable to schools in the United States. Although the article uses the terms college and university interchangeably, this is not the case in most of Canada. College throughout most provinces is geared towards people who will, for the most part, go into a nonprofessional career, while a university in Canada is for students who generally want to enter an "academic" career. This study was conducted among prospective university students. Given the college/ university system in Canada, it is incredibly unlikely that these clusters would apply to students in the U.S. for many reasons including the fact that students in the U.S. rarely have to struggle with deciding on which undergraduate school to attend based on their ultimately entering an academic versus nonacademic career.
On another note, the overall findings from this study on what factors affect a prospective student's decision on which school to attend (prestige, word of mouth, rankings, the campus, location, size etc) are similar to findings that we have found in our research across the United States. The main difference is the importance of athletics, which Mr. Steele correctly points out is a much bigger factor in the U.S.
Stefan Hankin
Deputy Director of Research
Widmeyer Communications
