Examining International Students' Satisfaction at UK Universities

EasyChair Preprint 1727

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are increasing rapidly worldwide, with a great competition for attracting more students which require ensuring students’ satisfaction, understanding students’ needs, problems and expectations. Students’ satisfaction (SS) is an essential element to students’ recruitment and has big impacts on both students and universities. Students’ satisfaction affects students’ fulfillment, achievements and success, and evaluates universities’ reputation, teaching and learning facilities, and measures the quality of services provided at universities. Successful universities acknowledge the significance of measuring SS and determining the aspects that affect students’ satisfaction level.

Much research conducted studies on examining students’ satisfaction in UK. However, those studies did not focus on International Students’ Satisfaction (ISS) which plays an important role in HE such as increasing universities’ financial capacity and providing universities with prestigious profession labels such as “International University of the Year”. Therefore, this research aimed to address the gap in earlier studies by measuring international students’ overall satisfaction and investigating the aspects that influence ISS at UK universities. This aim was achieved by conducting an online survey to collect data and extensively using Weka to measure the ISS level and determine the factors that influence ISS. Also, conducting four case studies with international students through semi-structured interviews to gain more specific information and valuable knowledge regarding their academic and social experiences. Consequently, based on the outcomes, some recommendations with some suggestions are proposed to help in increasing the welfare and fulfillment of international students and improve the quality of teaching and learning experiences.

Keyphrases: Academic and Social Integrations, Classification, Data Mining, International students’ satisfaction, WEKA, higher education, machine learning

@booklet{EasyChair:1727,
  author    = {Maha Albalushi and Fairouz Kamareddine},
  title     = {Examining International Students' Satisfaction at UK Universities},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1727},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}