Why do international students come to Hungary and what do they expect from us? - International students' motivation and expectations in Hungary

Abstract

THE AIMS OF THE PAPER

In the current paper, the results of the study conducted among the foreign students of a big Hungarian university are presented. The following main question is in the centre of the study: What relationships are there between the motivation and expectations of foreign students? The aim of this study, which is based on other preliminary researches, is to test a model about the possible relationship between foreign students’ motivation and expectations.

METHODOLOGY

Based on the secondary data and qualitative pilot research (3 focus-group discussions and 17 in-depth interviews), primary data has been collected in the form of an online questionnaire. The results were analysed with IBM SPSS and SmartPLS 3 software (sample: 121 people, population: foreign students at the University of Szeged).

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

According to the results of the research, the motivational dimensions that were studied have different effects on the factors related to expectations. The relationship between motivational dimensions (reference groups, self-actualization, cultural knowledge, integration, gaining knowledge) and the factors of expectations (social, personal, cultural, labour-market and educational) partly validated the hypotheses.  According to the PLS path coefficients, gaining knowledge has a significant effect on educational expectations, gaining cultural knowledge has a significant effect on cultural expectations, while the intention to integrate affects labour-market, personal and educational expectations. Based on the direct effects, we can conclude that integrative motivation has a dominant role in foreign student expectations.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The results can be applied to the university at hand, as it can be seen that students arriving here do not only phrase educational expectations, and their expectations are affected diversely by different motivation types and in different ways