Typology of Foreign Students Interested in Studying at Czech Universities

This paper undertakes and investigates some marketing segmentations of those students wishing to study abroad and the economic potential of such resulting segmentation within the individual groups. Three algorithms were employed as classification trees – CART, CHAID and QUEST for its evaluation from the group of supervised learning methods. From the group of unsupervised learning methods the two–step cluster analysis was chosen. This paper analyzes the results obtained using these methods. It aims to create classes of respondents harbouring similar opinions with respect to tuition fees to be paid by foreign students. We have used various tests for thehypotheses such the as Chi-square Test of Independence and the Kruskal-Wallis Test. The research sample consisted of more than one thousand students from six countries. A „perfect“ type of person as candidate was profiled in terms of willingness and the financial meansto pursue their studies in the Republic invested and this survey formed the basis of the profiling. Our research shows that an acceptable level of fees depends on several factors such as: the amount of travel involved, family and teachers at the school, then on the assumption that the study stay abroad would improve knowledge of foreign languages, practical work experience offered in the foreign country and the subsequent acquisition of a diploma with Europe-wide validity. There exists an acceptable level of tuition and this in turn reveals that the most acceptable level of tuition fees may be dependent upon the viewpoint of potential practical work experience abroad and then from the viewpoint of improvement in a foreign language. The amount of annual tuition fees that students are willing to pay depends too on the number of university-educated parents the students possess.