International Students’ Choice Behavior for Higher Education at Malaysian Private Universities

Abstract

- to examine the selection criteria by international students of their higher education at private higher learning institutions in Malaysia. It focuses on factors which private international students considered important in their decision of choosing Malaysia as their educational destination. - A questionnaire was designed to include 48 factors for selection of learning destination. Through judgmental sampling the data were solicited from 565 international students using survey instrument. - The results shown that six factors have a strong influence on international students’ decision-making process, namely, quality of learning environment, influencers, customer focus, cost, facilities, socialization and location. Further, through MANOVA, it was found that customer focus and facilities are the main factors used by respondents in their choice decisions.