THE ROLE OF IMMIGRATION POLICY IN ATTRACTING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Date
2011-05-10
Authors
MUTWIRI, KIMATHI KEN WALTER
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Abstract
Graduate students from Africa are pushed away from their countries of domicile in search for quality higher education opportunities. Push factors include personal reasons for instance; prospects of future career advancement as well as those push factors inherent in home countries such as unavailability of specialty courses, limited opportunities for doctoral studies and disruption of academic activities in the universities.
These students traverse long distances and incur expenses in search for higher education. Some end up in Asia, North America, Europe and Australia. In the last decade, South Africa has emerged as an attractive host to such students. The purpose of this exploratory study is to establish the factors that attract international graduate students from Africa into South Africa. In addition, the study seeks to examine whether the Immigration Act 2002 facilitated the process of drawing and retaining of the said graduate students.
The exploratory study is mainly qualitative in nature. Data has been gathered from focused group discussions, individual interviews and analysis of graduate students data collected from the Department of Education and the University of the Witwatersrand.
The research results have shown that international graduate students are attracted into South Africa as a result of three main factors; services offered by public universities, simplified Immigration processes and other non-policy factors such as the close proximity and shared cultural heritage of other African countries.
Nonetheless, aspects of immigrant regulation and non-policy factors such as negative labeling of foreigners combined to present an unfriendly environment to international students
Description
MM - P&DM
Keywords
Immigration policies, Students, International