Journal of Higher Education Research

Backgrounds — Students who graduated from high school and went to university have to consider and make a decision about their choice of university major, an extremely important decision to each of them, which can greatly influence their studying road, future occupation and even whole life. Purpose — The purpose of the research is to find out the main factors influencing NAU students’ choice of major. In addition, this research also aims to determine how Personal Factors, Family Factors and Profession Factors influence NAU students’ choice of major respectively. Methodology — We based on the previous research and narrowed three main factors including Personal Factor, Family Factor and Profession Factor as the main variables, then we conducted a questionnaire survey among all NAU students of different majors and grades, finally we analyzed the data that we collected and drew some conclusions. Results — We find that students have some knowledge of their major before they entering the university rather than knowing nothing, the Profession Factor is the top factor which is the biggest influence on the students’ choice of major, however, though some minor factors which belong to the Profession Factor have an important place, the dominant factor is still the Gaokao Score which belongs to the Personal Factor. As for those students who have changed their major, they more tend to choose Auditing, Accounting and Finance because of the professional advantages, only a few students are still dissatisfied with their chosen.