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

The paper is 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. These were analyzed on principal components factor analysis to ascertain factors related to their criteria to study in Malaysia. 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. These factors should be considered by colleges ’ managers to develop their marketing strategies in attracting foreign students to enroll at their institutions. It is also important for positioning strategy and strengthening higher learning institution offerings to the foreign market