Reasons Affecting University Preferences of Students Who Get Tourism Education at Undergraduate Level: Example of Istanbul Foundation Universities

Abstract

In education, school and department preferences are known as an extremely important factor in shaping people's future. Tourism education evaluates within this scope and it is accepted as an element that provides positive contributions to the increase of tourism incomes. Besides this it is also accepted tourism education has positive effect of increasing the satisfaction level of tourists participating in tourism to Turkey. In this context, it is possible to say that the desire to get vocational education at the undergraduate level in tourism is normal while university preferences are made. In this study, it was aimed to determine the factors affecting the reasons of university preference of the students who have undergraduate education in the field of tourism in foundation universities in Istanbul. In order to obtain data in this study which is designed as a quantitative research, a questionnaire was applied to 259 students of nearly 1.000 students who are studying at 9 foundation universities, which provide undergraduate tourism education in Istanbul. The findings were analyzed by factor analysis, t-test and Anova tests. As a result of the study, the reasons for preferring the foundation universities in Istanbul are: respectability, information and employment, campus facilities, location, economy and economic support elements.