ANALYSING THE FACTORS AFFECTING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS TO ADVANCE TO POSTGRADUATE STUDIES IN A HOST COUNTRY

Abstract

In business, the strategy of keeping your current customers to continue using your product is as fundamentally important as competing for new customers, and this strategy holds in most instances. With the internalisation of higher education and the consideration of higher education as tradable services, the focus on promoting education to attract more students from outside the country is accelerating and becoming more competitive. Similar to other services or products, retaining existing students to advance to a higher degree is equally important as searching for new students to enrol. Hence, this study investigates the factors that affect international students’ choice to remain in Malaysia for their postgraduate study after the completion of their undergraduate programme. Using data gathered from one of the public universities in Malaysia, this study employed a logit model to identify the educational choice motives that influence the decision of the currently enrolled international students to remain in Malaysia for their postgraduate study. An in-depth interview was also conducted to have a close view of the perception of the participants. The finding indicates that the consumption and investment motive contributed only partly in explaining their choice to remain in Malaysia. In particular, this study suggests that a good study environment at the university is the most likely factor that influences the currently enrolled international students’ decision to remain in Malaysia to further a degree, thus signifying the importance of consumption motives in determining their educational choice.