Page 79 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience

& Eaton, 2000), and the role played by learning quality (Ramsden, 2003; Biggs, 2003). Metzner & Bean (1987) theorize that factors such as participation, communication and membership in academic communities are at the center of understanding student experience. Astin’s Student Involvement Theory places the student at the center of the learning process, and asserts that the level of learning and growth that takes place as part of an education program is directly proportionate to the quality and quantity of student involvement in that program (Astin, 1999).
It is clearly important for universities to understand how international students experience their life on campus—particularly the academic experience—and what aspects they most value. The above research highlights both the importance of, and difficulties in, creating an equivalent academic experience between IBCs and home campuses. However, there are no large-scale quantitative studies examining differences between home institutions and their associated IBCs. This study seeks to investigate differences in international student satisfaction at home institutions and IBCs concerning academic experience using a set of home campuses and their associated IBCs. This research draws on the global integration–local responsiveness (I–R) paradigm, developed by Prahalad and Doz (1987) and adapted to the context of IBCs by Healey (2018), as the key theoretical lens used to examine student satisfaction and experience in transnational settings such as IBCs. The I–R paradigm describes the tension faced by multinational corporations (MNCs) in balancing standardization across all markets versus adapting a service—in this case, education— to a local market.
Healey notes:
“On the one hand, providing a standardized product or service globally allows them to exploit economies of scale and build a powerful global brand. For example, Coca Cola and Apple, the two most valuable manufacturing brands in the world (Interbrand 2014), sell standardized products across the world. On the other hand, if demand conditions vary between national markets, MNCs may be able to grow sales and profits by
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Satisfaction at IBCs and Home Campuses
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