Motivation Factors of Pursuing Higher Education in the Hungary-Romania Cross-Border Area

One of the main challenges and tasks for young people is that they have to reflect and define their most important goals, hopes and expectations regarding their future. These decisions include pursuing higher education. In the thesis, the decision to continue studies was analyzed as a landmark in the quest for status and as a consequence of the expansion of higher education, highlighting the influence of different variables such as the type and personal motivations, value systems and dimensions of attitudes towards learning, in addition to the social context of the individual. The decision to continue education is inextricably linked to young people's desire to build a career,to the future direction of social mobility. Becoming an intellectual is one possible solution to obtain a social status and upward social mobility, graduating from a higher graduation institution is often considered as a guarantee for a successful future. Educational theory and research from countries other than Romania remain focused on social class disparities, incorporating factors from the human capital investment framework, while Romanian research on the theme is also interested in more psycho-sociological approaches of the motivations for entering higher education. The aim of this paper is to analyze the decision to pursue higher education, as well as career choice, in correlation with the individual and social motivational context. The source of the data used in the research is the result of the cross sectional study carried out wihtin the HERD cross-border project in 2012; a sub-sample of undergraduate students from five higher education institutions was selected  (N = 2120). The main purpose of the thesis was to study the issues related to student motivation in pursuing higher education, in choosing a HEI and a major.