Each year about twenty five thousand young people begin studies at higher educational establishments in Latvia. However, some of them drop out and fail to continue their studies. Such situation causes waste of personal time and money, as well as irrational use of public resources. One of the factors that affects taking up and continuing studies is study motivation. This article is aimed at reflecting the results of an empirical study characterising the students’ study motivation and providing recommendations on promoting sustainability of such motivation. The emphasis in this study was placed on determining which social and economic factors affected the choice of the students as regards the particular higher educational establishments and study programmes. The study on the referred to motivation required the use of literature reviews and document analysis, content analysis and surveys (respondents – 161 Riga Technical University (RTU) students and 182 Latvia University (LU) students). As regards beginning studies, the LU and RTU first-year students have similar reasons, ranked according to their significance. They are related to the students’ interest in the future profession, willingness to become a student and to obtain a diploma of a certain university. When choosing a study programme, the influence of the direct social environment, namely, the advice from friends or family members and the feedback from others, is rather insignificant. Young people spend a considerable part of their time in the virtual environment, therefore it has an increasing influence on the motivation development. The authors believe that changes must be introduced in the communication with the future students, by addressing them and providing them with objective and detailed information in those segments of the virtual environment which are popular among them. Universities believe that advertising plays a crucial role in attracting students and therefore make huge investments for this purpose, however, the results of the study do not provide evidence supporting this assumption. Likewise, the modernity of the study environment is an important factor only as far as the development of the professional competences is concerned, but it is not an aim in itself. The referred to issues make it necessary to reconsider the usefulness of investing financial resources in organizing the advertising campaigns to attract the students and in modernizing the university infrastructures.