Assessing the Influence of Advertising on Student Enrolment in Private Tertiary Institutions in Ghana.

Private tertiary institutions have increasingly advertised their products in recent years to the general public in Ghana through various media. The desire to find out whether these institutions just copy other business entities blindly or that advertising actually helps in increasing their enrolments led to this study. The main aim of the study was to find out if advertising had an influence on students’ enrolment decision in private tertiary institutions. Two private universities were selected and all the students along with the admission/marketing officers of the institutions were targeted. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the students and unstructured interviews were organised to gather data from the admission/marketing officers. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the data. The results showed that advertising in addition to serving as a source of information to students also influenced the enrolment decision of some students. There were however other factors that influenced the enrolment decision of students such as family, friends, current students, etc that could be exploited by these institutions to their advantage.