A phenomenological study on international student withdrawals from Malaysian higher education institutions

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia has become a national priority as one of the key economic drivers for foreign exchange. The internationalisation strategy has concentrated on international student enrolment number, ignoring the student withdrawal or dropout issue in the system. While the focus of most drop-out studies in higher education has always been on the traditional campus setting that serve local students, most studies on international student withdrawal are from information system and computer field, utilizing data set approach and predicting the risk of dropping out. Thus, this study is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of international student withdrawals from higher institutions in Malaysia. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with former international students who dropped out of Malaysia higher institutions and moved to North Cyprus to continue their educational pursuit. The investigation focuses on the descriptions of the lived experiences of participants using a phenomenological approach.