Understanding African-American students' bounded rationality in their college choice behavior

As college enrollment continues to rise despite increases in college tuition, higher education professionals, government officials, and educational researchers seek to understand college enrollment patterns and students' decision-making processes for selecting colleges. The purpose of this study is to investigate African-American and other students' decision-making strategies used to select colleges, particularly in terms of bounded rationality. From a theoretical basis, students' bounded rationality represents the complexity in use of a decision-making strategy to make a college selection. The concept is rooted in previous research on cognitive structures that suggest that individuals have limited information and computational abilities to make choices.; Using data from the College Board's Admitted Student Questionnaire Plus(TM) (ASQ Plus(TM)) survey for the 2003--2004 school year, 20,722 responses from students admitted to liberal arts colleges on student characteristics, college information sources, and financial aid packaging were used to describe college decision-making strategies. Descriptive results demonstrated that students admitted to liberal arts colleges, particularly African-American students, used less complex decision-making strategies to select colleges. Correlational results identified mixed findings as to the predictive capability of student characteristics, college information sources, and financial aid packaging in relation to decision-making strategies used to select colleges. Overall the analysis affirmed the proposition that the college choice process for students is not just a set of unrelated factors and processes. Students do use decision-making strategies to select colleges and, given the increasingly competitive higher education environment, it is critical for higher education professionals, government officials, and educational researchers to understand the college choice process students use.