Modeling the post-secondary education in Singapore.

• Main Authors: Chew, Carene Fong Fong., Lee, Pei Shan., Neo, Yuan Zhen.
• Other Authors: David Alexander Reisman
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::General::Education
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14973
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Economics is often described as the science of choice. Our paper is interested in studying the choices available to consumers and producers in the postsecondary education market. We establish this by constructing a demand-supply model for the local context. This paper is structured as follows. First, we introduce the education market as a unique case of monopolistic competition. Then, we define ten differentiating factors that will affect a student’s choice of schools. These factors are split into academic, social and personal factors. Our main hypothesis is that students will prioritize academic factors, followed by social and personal factors respectively. Concepts from business economics, behavioral economics and economic sociology will be introduced to support our theoretical framework. After collecting 267 surveys, we ranked student preferences and measured their satisfaction level for each factor. We ran significance tests on SPSS to verify our data. Our results have proven our hypothesis correct with a few exceptions. As expected, academic factors were ranked as the top five determinants of school choice. Yet surprisingly, ‘location’ was the most important factor in choosing a school. We attribute this to the high opportunity cost of time found in our performative culture. We also found that social factors played a bigger role than expected in choosing a school. Ultimately, we hope to offer a real world representation of choices available to consumers and producers in the local educational context.