Public two-year colleges play a critical role in providing students with access to higher education. Some students attend these institutions to obtain skills needed for employment, while others enroll with the intent to transfer to another college or university. The factors influencing students’ selection of and enrollment in a public two-year college are numerous. However, comprehensive studies regarding the level of influence of these factors on the college-choice process in this context are limited. This quantitative study utilized a researcher-developed instrument in an effort to identify these factors. The survey instrument was developed based on a systematic process that included interviews with professionals in higher education, interviews with current students, and an extensive review of college choice literature and models. This study set out to answer five research questions: (1) To what extent do the opinions of others influence college choice? (2) To what extent do college recruitment efforts influence college choice? (3) To what extent do college characteristics influence college choice? (4) To what extent do financial factors influence college choice? (5) To what extent do student characteristics predict the amount of influence the following four areas have on college choice: (a) opinions of others, (b) recruitment efforts, (c) college characteristics, and (d) financial factors? Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) was utilized for data collection. The total sample consisted of 306 participants from 45 states in the United States. The findings suggested the following: (a) financial factors had the strongest influence on the decision to enroll in a public two-year college, (b) characteristics related to personal fit were the most influential college characteristics in the decision to enroll in a public two-year college, (c) the opinions of others influenced the decision to enroll in a public two-year college, with opinions of parents being most influential, and (d) the most influential recruitment efforts were those that could be self-accessed by the student. These findings extend the understanding of the characteristics of today’s public two-year college student and help inform recruitment efforts and policies related to public two-year college access.
