FACTORS INFLUENCING THE INTENTION AND DECISION OF CHINESE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO STUDY AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN MALAYSIA

The internationalization of higher education has provided more opportunities for China students. In view of the problems of studying abroad and cross-border of higher education, a large number of studies have been found in Malaysia. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to find out the main factors that influence the choice of Chinese high school students to study in Malaysia. Theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has been applied in this study considering the theory essentially studied consumer behaviour especially in the field of marketing. The target population of this study is all the third-year high school students, who are in the urban area of four third-tier cities in Jiangxi province of China and the unit of analysis is every third-year high school student, who is in the urban area of four third-tier cities in Jiangxi province of China. In this study, the unlimited probability sampling design or simple random sampling is utilized. It was found in this study that academic expectation is not significant in influencing China’s students’ intention to study in Malaysia and China’s student intention to study in Malaysia does not mediate between academic expectation and decision to study in Malaysian higher education institution. With the vast population of China with different demographic settings due to cultural and background differences, this study may not have conclusively covered all spectrum for this study. However, this can be done by having a larger coverage of China target population. , entrepreneur or marketers have to hire a highly qualified academic staffs to convey appropriate and high quality knowledge to the students. The brand equity of foreign students was one of the significant factors that impact their enrolment in of higher education institution. Notably, this study improves the current written literature on influential factors towards intention of student enrolment in of higher education institution. However, future researchers are advisable to ensure target respondents of questionnaire survey are distributed fairly based on the region and to produce a result with higher generalizability and representative for all foreign students