Factors influencing international students decision to study at Taiwanese Universities

Abstract

This study investigates the factors influencing international students‘ decision to study at Taiwanese universities, as internationalization of education is becoming population. The research used the mixed methods approach to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. The research participants consisted of 478 international students from two Taiwanese universities, 200 international students randomly selected the number based on Yamane (1967) from a public university, 278 international students from a private university. These two universities were chosen as the study research sites. In the process of data collection, a specially designed questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The research was conducted in the second semester of 2018 academic session (In Taiwan). The questionnaire was analyzed with mean and S.D, while the interviews content were analyzed into themes related to what influencing the interviewees‘ decision-making. The themes were ranked according to frequencies. The questionnaire data found three top factors influencing international students‘ decision to study in Taiwan. First was" Scholarships" (Ⴟ 4.44), followed by the factors of "Society and Culture"(Ⴟ 4.27), and "Language Skills" (Ⴟ 4.06). The three factors found at the bottom of the list were "Recommendation and Support" (Ⴟ 3.39) followed by "Desired Programs/Courses" (Ⴟ 3.36) and "International Environment" (x 3.69).