Market Positioning of Public and Private Universities in Ghana: Students Perspective

This paper concentrates on universities strategies for admitting students and the rate at which private sector universities expand in today's higher educational setups. This paper answers the following question: to what extend are the public universities different from the private universities? In an attempt to find the answers, the whole study is developed towards students' perception of the universities positioning in terms of what they are offering to the customers, through what they prompt people to apply for admission? Therefore, this paper looks at the prevailing admission strategies and potential students' entry requirements at both public and private universities to determine the theoretical systems that are used by these universities in competition for customers (students). A quantitative survey of students in both public and private universities in Ghana was undergone In all, a total number of 255 questionnaires were printed. Only 187 were answered and returned out of 200 distributed questionnaires to the public sector universities whereas 55 questionnaires were distributed to the private sector students and 51 were answered and returned. This research was based on sampling data collection methods. The findings show that there are three categories of universities such as Publicly/Fully Independent Chartered Universities, Privately Owned Universities and Personal/Sole Proprietorship University Colleges. All these affect students' choices for admission application. The findings clearly indicate that both public and private universities purposes are related using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient formulae to that of the sole proprietorship colleges. Also, the admission requirement strategies differ between public and private universities.