Enrollment motivation and student engagement behaviors: disparity among freshmen of an education department from three universities with different academic levels

ABSTRACT

This study attempted to answer two questions: (a) Are there significant differences in students’ motivation for enrollment among freshmen of an education department between universities with high, medium, and low academic levels? and (b) Can the academic level of the universities and enrollment motivation significantly predict students’ engagement behaviors and teacher career aspiration? The sample consisted of 106 freshmen in education departments of three 4-year research universities of different academic levels in Taiwan. The findings indicated that the academic level of universities was not a factor for enrollment motivation. Participants from the university with a low academic level chose the education department less often for the university environment compared with the other participant groups, and participants from the university with a high academic level reported significantly lower task value than the other participant groups. Intrinsic motivation was the most essential variable when predicting certain engagement behaviors and teacher career aspiration.

KEYWORDS:

• Enrollment motivation
• engagement
• university rankings
• freshmen
• first-year college student

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Percentile ranks of high-, medium-, and low-academic level universities were approximately 10%, 40%, and 70%, respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan: [grant number MOST 107-2410-H-845-015].