Private Education Institutions in Singapore in the Past Five Years - Dissertation Example

It is also noted that after such students have had a chance to start their study program overseas, they still have to struggle to circumvent day in day out challenges experienced in their host countries. Thus in this dissertation, the author takes a descriptive approach to explore factors that influence foreign students in their decisions to pursue foreign education in private institutions in Singapore. These factors comprise both the attractive ones in the host country and those deriving the students from their home nations.

The study also explores challenges faced by such students while pursuing their education in Singaporean private institutions. The study surveyed a total of 50 foreign students from three randomly selected private universities in Singapore. Data was collected using questionnaires and subjected to descriptive analysis. The finding indicates that high-quality education in such institutions and preference of foreign graduates by employers among other factors pull foreign students to Singapore private institutions.

On the other hand, factors that were noted to contribute towards moving away from home countries by these students included the perception that foreign graduates are superior, lack of program of interest in the home country, and high-quality education overseas. Accommodation, dietary adjustment, language barriers, nostalgia, and climatic adjustment were among the challenges noted to affect such students while undertaking their studies 1.1 Introduction This chapter gives an outline of the background information of the study, justifies the study, and specifies the scope of the study.

It also highlights research objectives and research questions and how the paper has been organized. 1.2 Background information Education is noted to significantly affect people’s lives, how they participate in economic activities, and also contribute to general economic development in different ways (Rienzo & Wilkinson, 2013). Indeed, a person without basic literacy skills has difficulties in mastering daily life. In addition, education is a powerful empowerment tool and a path to poverty eradication (Michaelowa, 2000; Materu, 2007).

Materu (2007) adds that tertiary education is pivotal in giving societies an advantageous edge, especially in the competitive and globalizing world. In Africa, it has critically contributed to professional training and capacity building in line with the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Analogously economic growth and development of Singapore since 1965 are strongly attributed to the rising technological literacy among its people as a result of its educational system (Boon & Gopinathan, 2006).

It is worthwhile noting that Singapore launched a vision of “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation,” in 1997, and since then its education system has been skewed towards grooming an innovative society aligned to the 21st century’s needs and opportunities (Lee, 2008).

Growing need for foreign education

Studying abroad has become a common phenomenon globally. International studies are fueled by many factors broadly classified as push and pull factors. Pull factors are those emanating from the destination while the push ones are those from the domestic countries. According to Mazzarol and Soutar (2008), the likely pull factors could include reputation and awareness of the host nation and its institutions, personal recommendations, education quality in institutions abroad, and guardian or parents’ recommendation. In addition, Mazzarol (1998) adds other pull factors as market profile, alliances or coalition, range of courses, teaching programs abroad, innovation rate, staff experience, resources, and utilization of information technology among others. On the other hand, push factors include; the perception that offshore course is superior relative to local ones, difficulty in securing a chance in the desired program in a domestic country, plans to migrate to host country after studies, economic hardships, a technological lag, and unfair laws in home nations, (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2008; 2002).

According to Orahood, Kruze, and Pearson (2004), students with foreign education are more interested in international career opportunities and also acquire first-class education than their counterparts, learn a new language(s) and culture among others. Curiosity and the belief that foreign experience opens up the minds of such individuals play great roles too in promoting foreign education (Meek, 2011). Until the Mid-1990s, it was a common feature that the main destinations for foreign education were the traditional English-speaking countries namely; United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), and Australia. However, the trend changed thereafter when institutions from these countries were encouraged by foreign governments to start full-fledged campuses abroad among other arrangements, and as such by 2010 East Asian countries like Malaysia, Singapore and China were actively in the race of becoming an equally favored destination for foreign education (UNESCO, 2013). The population of students enrolled in countries in which they are not citizens had risen from 0.8 million in 1975 to 4.1 million in 2010 globally and was expected to maintain the upward trend (Meek, 2011).

Private education institutions of Singapore as destinations for foreign students

Private learning institutions are noted to have an edge over the public ones in their service delivery. Though most of the empirical works caution against the generalization of their findings to different contexts, it is seemingly apparent that such results indicate that students in private educational centers are more advantaged in many ways including higher performance in the test score than those in public institutions (Coulson, 2009; Peterson & Llaudet, 2006).

In the year 2006, there were about 1203 private institutions of education in Singapore (Victor, 2009). Foreign students are driven to study in private institutions in Singapore by several motives. According to Wang (2004), the three motives noted are academic or education, experience and pleasure, and career and migration. Min, Khoon & Tan (2012) adds another motive of work to those outlined by Wang (2004). All these motives are argued to be positively correlated with studying in Singapore’s private institution and beyond (Min et al., 2012

The need for foreign education has been noted to be on the rise. However, most students especially before joining foreign institutions go through various challenges, and those who fail to circumvent these challenges end up being blocked out from overseas education. These challenges include high tuition fees, restrictions on both visa application and university admissions among others (Zeeshan, Sabbar, Bashir & Hussain, 2013).