International education services: challenges for Australia

Australian universities face a challenging task of servicing an increasingly diverse international student community in the globally competitive education market. The pressure on universities to successfully negotiate the cultural diversity and improvement in service quality will continue to increase with the global expansion of the international student market. Market forecasts indicate an increase in the number of students seeking higher education overseas by 2025 to 7.2 million. The attractiveness of the international education market in the form of both pecuniary and non pecuniary benefits will continue to create a highly competitive environment for Australia requiring Australian higher education institutions to pursue well planned strategies to maintain a globally competitive position.

Student satisfaction is a key strategic variable in maintaining such a competitive position with long term benefits arising from student loyalty, positive word of mouth (WOM) communication and image of the study destinations and to meet the challenges of increasing global competition, rising student expectations of quality, service and value for money.

This paper, based on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, and using logistic regression, ANOVA and chi square testing, investigates factors that influence international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in Australia and concludes with strategic implications for universities