A Study of the Relationships between Students’ Socio-economic Status and Their Perception of Investment in Graduate Education

This research was conducted with purpose of studying the relationship between socio-economic status of students and their perceptions of investment in graduate education. A descriptive survey method was used for this study. Statistical population included all 12045 paying tuition graduate students at Tehran’s state universities in 2010-2011 school-year. Cluster random sampling was used to choose a sample of 379 students in Amir Kabir University, Kharazmi University, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran University, Sharif University and Allameh Tabatabaee University. A researcher made questionnaire was used to evaluate the perceptions of students in investing in higher education and their socio-economic status. Findings indicated that there were a significant relationship between socio-economic status, and appropriateness of fees and appropriateness of supportive policies perceptions. There were no significant relationships between socio-economic status of students and following three variables: 1) perception of the future cash incomes, 2) perception of the future non-monetary incomes and 3) tendency to get loans. Regarding the main hypothesis, there was a significant relationship between socio-economic status of students and their perceptions of investment in graduate education. The results of this research illustrated that financial and social incentives were predictors of students’ perceptions of investment in graduate education.