A Perception Based Analysis of Internationalization at Malaysian Private Universities

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the Malaysian private universities’ international efforts adhere to the general approach to internationalization and to explore the degree of perceived importance and perceived implementation those efforts at institutional level. By integrating several models and frameworks proposed by scholars in internationalization domain such as Knight and Zha, the paper presents a conceptual framework comprising preliminary factors, strategy factors and process factors of internationalization at universities. Instrument developed for these factors were tested on 204 academics from 10 Malaysian private universities to analyze their perceived importance and perceived implementation. Based on an overview of all factors, it is found that the average mean values of factors that perceived as important are higher than the values accounted for the perceived degree of implementation of internationalization at Malaysian private universities. The study extends the scope of the internationalization literature on an emerging market context and probably one of the first to conduct empirical tests/structured questionnaire in assessing internationalization issues in the context of the Malaysian private university sector. The study traced internationalization efforts of Malaysian private universities which provide practitioners with more evidence of the value of internationalization. The conceptual framework exemplified in this study is considered the most significant contribution of this research work in terms of providing measurement tools for evaluation and assessment of internationalization efforts in the higher education domain.