Globalization has made study overseas more possible, the international service trade developed, including cross border education. It also influenced the international student mobility. Thus, education could be seen as commodity that is freely traded rather than a public service and this made education become more commercial. Even education export sector has been one of the biggest incomes for Australia.
Over decades the significant increase of international student mobility shows that United States, United Kingdom, and Australia have been the most favourite destination to study overseas, with Australia as the first priority among Indonesian students. Currently, there are many factors influencing the students' decision to study overseas. Moreover, Mazzarol & Soutar (2002) described it into "push-pull" model related to the factors from host country and home country.
Replicated from a research conducted by Ching-Huei Chen & Zimitat Craig (2006) which used the theory of planned behavior approach to analyze factors that influence Taiwanese students' choice of Australia to study overseas, this research's aims to gain further understanding and identify the factors that influence Indonesian students' intention to study overseas based on the theory of planned behavior approach. Therefore, according to the theory of planned behavior, the factors that influence Indonesian students to study in Australia can be categorized in three independent variables: attitude towards behavior, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control.
This research used mixed method for the research method: the coefficient determination, F-test, t-test, and the multiple regression model for the quantitative statistical method, and depth interview for the qualitative method. The research data was collected from 76 samples of respondent. The sample was not only collected from the survey in Uniprep, but also via online using google drive.
It can be concluded that the attitude towards behavior variable, subjective norm variable, and the perceived behavioral control variable influenced the intention of Indonesian students to choose Australia as a higher-education destination country. The research found that the perceived behavioral control had the most contribution to affect the intention variable, while the subjective norm is the least contributive to the behavioral intention. From the interview result, it was found that the local education institution cooperation through a pathway to certain Australia's university can be considered as the important factor. Australia has high tuition fee and high living cost; the exchange rates between Australian dollar to Rupiah might be the cause. Thus, this can be the disadvantage of study in Australia's higher education.
When the ASEAN Economic Community start in 2015, Australia has to notice that the competition to attract Indonesian student market will become fiercer against the South East Asian countries -such as Singapore, Malaysia- because the cost issue among South East Asian countries will be cheaper than Australia. |