Abstract:

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are becoming increasingly international, integrating international degrees, Erasmus students, researchers from different countries, and globally recognized lecturers in their academic infrastructures. This internationalization process mainly affects universities in their institutional goals, purpose, admission process, essential functions, and daily activities. Therefore, success in the process is related to effective development and preparation and motivation strategies for faculty members and students to create an appropriate educational environment. For this purpose, HEIs need to teach and implement global IT resources in an international cross-cultural environment. However, this internationalization process may fail because students sometimes lack language competence, teachers use inappropriate teaching strategies, or there are problems of poor communication, lack of motivation, little resource usage, etc. This paper analyses how students perceive the internationalization of their faculties according to subjective and objective factors related to their college environment. For empirical research, we used data from students at a university in the centre of Spain. On the one hand, the results obtained show the importance of subjective variables, such as interest, motivation, and curriculum improvement. On the other hand, we find the crucial importance of the family, professional and economic situation for international intentions to study abroad. However, students consider the faculty and university support services to be inadequate. They also think weaknesses exist in a lack of knowledge of procedures and a lack of curricular flexibility for global mobility.

Keywords:

Higher Education Institutions; Internationalization; students' perception.