Relationship Between International Students’ Experience, Adjustment And Academic Performance In Malaysian Public Universities
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Date
2015-04
Authors
Othman, Nur Zahiyah
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Abstract
In 2011, the Ministry of Higher Education has set an aim to project 200,000
international students studying in Malaysia by 2020. The receiving number of international
student is aligned with Key Performance Index (KPI) of internationalization of Malaysian
Higher Education. Malaysian public universities such as Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM),
Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia
(UPM), and International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) are among the Malaysian
top universities and their participation toward the accomplishment of the aim is not excluded.
The growing number of international students since the last few years has brought the
universities attention to think on how to better accommodate and retain them. These efforts
however depending on how well the international students adjusted to Malaysian
environment. More adjustments’ difficulties could affect their academic performance and
these may affect their decision to drop or being drop from university. Therefore, the present
study has objective to examine (1) the experiences of international undergraduate students
that related to three types of adjustments, including sociocultural, psychological and
academic, in Malaysia and (2) its effect on academic performance. The experiences tested
were social support, English language proficiency, university environment, and general living
condition. A total of 580 international undergraduate students participated in the present
study. This study used a cross-sectional, quantitative study and applied snowball techniques.
Composite reliability for each measurement was calculated to determine internal reliability.
Discriminant validity was performed to examine the dissimilarity between the measurements.
Analysis of bootstrapping was utilized to examine the relationships of variables as in the proposed framework. Results showed that all types of adjustments including the three
dimensions of sociocultural adjustment (impersonal endeavours, cultural empathy, and
cultural relatedness), psychological, and academic adjustments were influenced by university
environment. Other than university environment, the results showed that: (1) sociocultural
(impersonal endeavours) adjustment was influenced by family support, lecturer support, and
English language proficiency; (2) sociocultural (cultural empathy and cultural relatedness)
adjustment was influenced by English language proficiency; (3) psychological adjustment
was influenced by family support, and lecturer support; (4) academic adjustment was
influenced by friend support, lecturer support, English language proficiency and general
living condition. In addition to that, the sociocultural (cultural empathy), psychological, and
academic adjustments were found to positively and significantly affect academic performance
of international undergraduate students. In the end of the study, several theoretical, practical
and methodological implications were discussed.
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Management