The conclusions and recommendations of the research results are discussed below. The main purposes of this study were to: provide a descriptive overview of factors influencing international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation; discover the interrelationships among personal factors, university experiences, labor market and international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation; as well as to develop an integrated model of factors influencing international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. The conclusion of this investigation will be guided by the three main purposes of the study.
Descriptive Overview of Influencing Factors
The results of the study revealed that on average, respondents agreed to the influence of personal factors, university experiences and labor market factors on their choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. Taiwan’s labor market was the leading influence. While university experiences had an insignificant negative influence. The descriptive results also revealed that a majority of the respondents want to work in Taiwan after graduation.
However, the discussion section unveiled that this intention might be constrained and restricted by other factors such as university experiences. International students’ choice of working in Taiwan might also be restricted by the policies of the government’s agencies that offer scholarships such as TaiwanICDF. In line with the terms and conditions of TaiwanICDF, international students must return back to their home countries after graduation. As already been mentioned in the results discussion section, this regulation is in conflict with the current all-out campaign of attracting global talent into the country as initiated and propagated by Taiwan’s National Development Council under the department of human resource development (www.ndc.gov.tw/en). Hence this study can conclude by pointing out that, the Taiwanese government must harmonize the conflicting policies of her agencies if she is serious about attracting global talent and winning the global battle for professional talent.
Interrelationships among the Study Variables
In line with the second purpose of the study, the results showed that all the study variables have some connections with each other. The empirical tests revealed that personal factors and
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Taiwan’s labor market have a strong relationship with international students’ choice of working in the country after graduation. The regression analysis also uncovered personal factors and Taiwan’s labor market as strong predictors of international students’ choice of working in the country after graduation. While university experience appeared to be a negative and insignificant predictor.
Personal factors had the strongest relationship with university experiences and thus it can be concluded that it is a significant predictor of international students’ university experiences as compared to their choice of working in Taiwan.
Integrated Model
Another key purpose of the study was to develop an integrated model of the factors that influence international students to work in host countries after graduation. As illustrated in Figure 5.1. below, this integrated model is made up of personal factors, university experiences, labor market factors and international students’ choice.
Figure 5.1. Integrated model developed by the study Labor Market
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Limitations
The study sample included students that were sponsored by TaiwanICDF and MOE, who have to abide by the policy of returning back to their home countries after graduation. This policy will have a huge influence on these students’ choice and the final decision as well as the actual action of working in Taiwan after graduation. So even if they indicated that they want to work in the country as a majority of the respondents did so, but they have no choice other than to leave the country and go back to their home countries after completing their studies.
Another limitation was the absence of an updated record of the total population of international students in Taiwan. The website of the ministry of education in Taiwan still show only the statistics of 2014, which reports that there were 278,055 international students enrolled in Taiwan universities, of which it is most likely that this number had increased or decreased in recent years (http://english.moe.gov.tw). The small sample (205 international students) was another limitation, which makes it necessary that the results of this study should be generalized with caution to the total population of international students in Taiwan.
Various constraints such as time, a busy schedule of international students at the time of collecting the data, all prevented the researcher from getting a sufficient amount of participants. A sufficient amount would have ranged from 1, 000 to 50, 000 participants. The time limit also barred the researcher from assessing the English language ability of the respondents before participating in the study.
Recommendations
There is no doubt that the results of this study can be applied to attract and retain a sufficient amount of international students in Taiwan and in other host countries as potential future foreign and professional talent. This action is made necessary by the unprecedented projected decline of Taiwan’s supply of the working-age population in the near future, and the nation’s aging demographic structure which reached a high turning point in 2012 (www.ndc.gov.tw/en). This implies that if the country fails to attract and retain a sufficient amount of foreign professional talent, there will be a huge skills gap in the country’s labor market, which can lead to poor national economic performances and fewer profits in the various sectors of the countries’ economic sectors.
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From the results of the study a few recommendations and contributions are enlisted in the closing sections.
Recommendations for the Government of Taiwan
The following recommendations are proposed for the government of Taiwan:
1. Need to harmonize the conflict of interest of her policy for attracting global talent with some of her agencies’ policies of sending back international students to their home countries after completing their studies.
2. The government should promote and sponsor more investigations on factors that influence international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation if she really wants to win the current global war for foreign talent. This is made necessary by the fact that this model only accounts for only thirty-two percent of these factors. Hence there is a need of searching for the remaining sixty-eight percent factors.
3. The government also needs to explore other advertisement strategies of the NHRD action program, since this investigation, as shown in the descriptive analysis section, discovered that only a few of international students are aware of this program.
Recommendations for University Administrators
The following remedies are proposed for school administrators to boost international students’ academic satisfaction:
1. University administrators should seek feedback from international students concerning their academic satisfaction on a timely basis. This can be done by organizing informal social gatherings and various kinds of extra curriculum activities to make it easy for international students to voice out any possible concern about their academic satisfaction.
2. Universities authority should also increase efforts of seeking foreign students’
educational expectations so that there can be attempts to provide the kind of education that will lead to their academic satisfaction.
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Recommendation for Future Researchers
Based on the data collection procedure, study results and discussions the researchers present the following recommendations for future researchers;
1. There is a need to replicate this study in the same context with a larger sample and with much control on the data collection procedure. This is made necessary by the contrast between the very good results of the pilot study compared to the good of the main study.
One of the reasons that contributed to the impressive outcomes of the pilot is that the researchers were able to have much control over the participants. While there was less control over the main study participants.
2. Another recommendation is that researchers should search for other factors that influence international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. This is necessary because the present study discussion section revealed that this integrated model accounts for only thirty-two percent of the overall factors that influence international students to work in Taiwan after graduation. This shows that this is still a rich field of future research studies most especially in this era of a global war for talent.
Contributions
In response to the research problem, this study has made a contribution to the understudied factors that influence international students’ choice of working in host countries after graduation.
The first contribution is that, it built upon previous studies and developed an integrated model of the factors influencing students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. Of course, this is not a perfect and sufficient integrated model for such a complicated phenomenon, but the attempts were worth it since the results are impressive. This model also opened the way for further investigations that will enhance our understanding of this phenomenon.
Another contribution is that drawing insights from Preacher and Hayes (2004), the present study empirically tested and confirmed the mediating influence of university experiences and labor market factors on the direct influence of personal factors on international students’ choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. It is also very important to add that there are still a lot of mediators and moderators on this relationship that still needs to be uncovered by future investigations.
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APPENDIX A: RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRE
Dear International Student,
You are kindly requested to participate in this research survey conducted by Wandile W. W. Mntshali, a student from the Graduate Institute of International Human Resource Development (IHRD) at NTNU, supervised by Dr. Lai. This information is needed to identify and provide a descriptive overview of factors that influence foreign students to make a choice of working in Taiwan after graduation. You are invited to participate in this survey only if you are currently an international student enrolled in one of the universities in Taiwan. Rest assured that your responses would be kept confidential, and all data you fill will be used for this research analysis only.
We kindly ask for approximately 10 minutes of your time to fill in this survey.
Thank you very much in advance for your valuable and meaningful contribution.
Please Turn to the Next Page to begin the survey.
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1. Personal Factors
Below are statements about your personal preferences and life experiences in Taiwan. Using the following scales, indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements.
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2. Labour Market Factors
Below are statements about your perception of Taiwan’s labor market in comparison to that of your country. Using the following scales, indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with the statements.
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3. University Experiences Factors
Below are statements about your university experiences in Taiwan. Using the following scales, indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with the statements.
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Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
4.
Individual characteristics, life experiences and demographic information
Are you aware of the Integrated National Human Resource Development (NHRD) action program in Taiwan?
Not Aware
Aware
5. Besides studying in Taiwan, do you have another international study experience?
No
Yes
6. Do you want to work in Taiwan after graduation?
Definitely Yes
Definitely No
7. Which country is your ideal workplace destination of choice?
Attending this university gives me a sense of
accomplishment
I am so busy keeping up with class works that I do not have time to socialize and make friends
85 8. What is your country of origin?
9. If you are married, did you bring your husband/wife in Taiwan?
Yes No
Not Married/Applicable
10. How many years of work experience do you have in Taiwan?
None Less than 1 year 1-2 years 3-5 years more than 5 years
11. If you already have children in your marriage, did you bring them to Taiwan?
Yes
No
Not Married/Application
12. Do your sister(s) or brother(s), cousin or other distant relative live in Taiwan?
Yes
No
86 13. How many years have you already spent in Taiwan?
Less than 1 Year 1-2 years 3-4 years 5 years More than 5 years
14. How many years will you spend in Taiwan?
Less than 1 year 1-2 years 3-4 years More than 5 years Undecided yet
15. Gender
16. Age range
<18
18 - 29
30 - 44 Female
Male
Other (please specify)
87 17. Marital status
Single
Married
Divorced
18. Your university is located in which part of Taiwan?
18. Your university is located in which part of Taiwan?