Determining fit: the role of matching procedures in prospective higher education students’ enrolment behaviour

Figures & data

Figure 1. Enrolment procedure for prospective students at Dutch universities for non-selective programs.

Table 1. Programs in the sample per cohort; pre-matching cohorts in grey.

Cohort	University
	U1	U2	U3	U4
Type of matching	Mixed	Interview	Online course	Matching day
2009				HUM/STEM/SS
2010				All programs
2011				All programs
2012	All programs			All programs
2013	All programs			All programs
2014	All programs	All programs		All programs
2015	HUM/STEM/SS	All programs		All programs
2016	All programs	All programs		All programs
2017	All programs		STEM	All programs

In University 1, the humanities and social sciences program consisted of a matching day on campus, the business program applied online matching and the STEM program conducted interviews with students at risk.

Figure 2. Enrolment rates by type of matching in total and per university; all matching cohorts.

Table 2. Post-hoc tests (with Bonferroni correction) showing the association between enrolment rate and type of matching procedure for the total sample and different sub samples.

	Interviews at risk students vs. online matching	Online matching vs. trial studying on campus	Interviews at risk students vs. trial studying on campus
Total sample	χ^2 (1, N = 4,582) = 28.04, p < .001, V = .08	χ^2 (1, N = 9,504) = 30.62, p < .001, V = .06	χ^2 (1, N = 7,822) = 120.43, p < .001, V = .12
University 1	χ^2 (1, N = 2,546) = 9.65, p = .006, V = .06	χ^2 (1, N = 3,066) = 2.89, p = .267, V = .03	χ^2 (1, N = 1,422) = 15.88, p < .001, V = .11
HUM	χ^2 (1, N = 444) = .01, p = 1.00, V = .00	χ^2 (1, N = 1,573) = 6.44, p = .033, V = .06	χ^2 (1, N = 1,785) = 17.00, p < .001, V = .10
BUS	χ^2 (1, N = 2,742) = 5.28, p = .066, V = .04	χ^2 (1, N = 4,812) = 71.49, p < .001, V = .12	χ^2 (1, N = 3,596) = 72.57, p < .001, V = .14
STEM	χ^2 (1, N = 1,233) = 33.41, p < .001, V = .17	χ^2 (1, N = 1,641) = 23.01, p < .001, V = .12	χ^2 (1, N = 1,700) = 2.78, p = .288, V = .04

Figure 3. Enrolment rates by type of matching per discipline; all matching cohorts.

Figure 4. Enrolment rates per program of University 1 before (light grey) and after (black) the implementation of matching.

Data for the business program of University 1 is missing since selection procedures were applied for the 2015 cohort.

Table 3. Chi-square tests of the association between belonging to a matching cohort and enrolment rate for the different disciplines in University 1 and University 4.

	Total sample U1 with all admission requests	Total sample U4 with all admission requests	Sub sample U4 with applicants who filed one admission request
HUM	χ^2 (1, N = 860) = 51.84, p < .001, V = .25	χ^2 (1, N = 2380) = 173.37, p < .001, V = .27	χ^2 (1, N = 1807) = 88.34, p < .001, V = .22
BUS	χ^2 (1, N = 3741) = 0.03, p = .873, V = .00	χ^2 (1, N = 5178) = 15.58, p < .001, V = .06	χ^2 (1, N = 4445) = 33.33, p < .001, V = .09
STEM	χ^2 (1, N = 627) = 0.15, p = .693, V = .02	χ^2 (1, N = 1450) = 54.58, p < .001, V = .21	χ^2 (1, N = 1003), 36.08, p < .001, V = .19
SS	χ^2 (1, N = 973) = 48.80, p < .001, V = .22	χ^2 (1, N = 1525) = 84.08, p < .001, V = .24	χ^2 (1, N = 954) = 34.65, p < .001, V = .19

Figure 5. Enrolment rates per program of University 4 before (light grey) and after (black) the implementation of matching.

Data for the business program is missing for the 2009 cohort.