Abstract:

Student mobility for getting higher education is a common phenomenon in current era. The growing number of culturally diverse students poses a challenge among higher education institutions to win the competition of attracting more international students, as it will add revenue generating capacity for them. The concept of student satisfaction has attracted attention of university administration in recent years. Students are the direct recipients of education services. Thus, student satisfaction may be taken as a quality management technique in higher education. A comprehensive student satisfaction model for international students is very crucial as it will help in identifying the antecedents of satisfaction. Thus, ultimately, it will ensure their retention and loyalty. This paper critically reviews various existing student satisfaction models from the perspective of international students. The review shows that these models have limited scope for ensuring international students satisfaction. Based on the analysis of existing models and related issues, the authors proposed a conceptual model of student satisfaction. The proposed model gives importance to international student’s demographic factors, service quality of higher education institutions, student engagement and socio-cultural adaptation for ensuring their satisfaction. Implications and future directions of this research are discussed.

Keywords:

Student satisfaction, student loyalty, student engagement, socio-cultural adaptation, international students, service quality.