engleski

Student Motivation for Entering Higher Education in Croatia

The research purpose of this paper is to define the most frequent reasons and motivations for university enrolment of Croatia’s students as well as aspects of social context that are correlated with certain types of motivation. The paper is based on research data collected in the context of a broader study of Croatian students’ characteristics. The quantitative research was conducted in 2010 by the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb and the data is consisted of 2000 students of all Croatian universities and scientific fields. The first hypothesis is that students are mostly intrinsically motivated to study and the second is that the types of study motivations are influenced by students’ social background such as socio‐demographic variables, scientific field of study, average final grades from high school and type of graduated high school. The reasons for continuation of study largely depend on young persons’ complex constellation of social conditions, biography construction and “reflexive process of reasoning” (Gryntes, 2011: 347), so this paper is limited to defining the correlation of certain aspects of students’ social background and their motivations to continue studies on higher educational level. Policy implications are recognized in actions that can enable access to higher education for young people in Croatia irrespective of social context they are embedded in.

university students; study motivation; higher education; social background

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