Motives For Male And Female University Students To Travel Overseas

Literature Review

What Were The Motives Of Why Male University Students Travel Overseas?

What Were The Motives Of Why Female Students Travel Overseas?

What Were The Differences Between Male And Female University Students Travel Overseas?

What Are The Similarities Between Male And Female University Students Travel Overseas?

In the recent past, travelling have become so easy particularly for the students studying in the higher learning institutions. Travelling is one of the ways one can explore the world as the tourists do for the purpose of spending their vocational time in different seasons of the year. Could this also be the case for the students who travel overseas? The question sounds rhetorical, it has weight that needs to be addressed for the clarity of issues. The main aim for students to travel might seem different but closely related to that of the tourists particularly for the international students. In the previous centuries, very few universities and states offered scholarships to the students which in one way or the other hindered students travel overseas. The case is now different as states, organizations, universities etc. offer scholarship slots to both international and local students. This report will therefore exhaust motives for university students’ travel overseas. The motives will be captured in the literature review and the results.

Reviewed literature showed that Globalization was one of the effects that take the center stage and having the implications on mobility of people than before, particularly learners and skilled personnel, this is according to (Roberts et al; 2015). The social and economic impact of migration of students is somewhat consistent but very small. Students who travel internationally temporarily resides in their country of destination for education or work activities (Gardiner, S., King, B., & Wilkins, H, 2013). (Lin, Y. H., Lee, Y. C., & Wang, S. C. 2012) reported that agreement was signed by New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Germany with Australia making them favored destinations. Travelling caused the highest surge in other nations as the well skilled population migrated to other countries for other reasons such as education in the previous decades (Forsey, M., Broomhall, S., & Davis, J., 2012). With reference to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute of Statistics (UNESCO), they stated that the number of mobile students in the world had increased to 17 million students by 2001 inn US (Kim, K., Oh, I. K., & Jogaratnam, G. 2007).  The aforementioned increase represents 65 percent since the new millennium 2000 (Kramsch, 2014). The researchers are still working and some researches shows that the number of students travelling is expected to increase further to about 6 million in 2020 (Shields, 2013). Increase in the international students is thought to be as a result of the benefits in the immigrants as they are treated to be the people representing the highly achieving and motivated group (Forsey et al, 2012). The countries are seen to be on the verge of hosting the international students as they partially contribute to the economies of those countries that host them. In response to this statement, an example of a country that earns such benefits in terms of economies from the immigrant students is the United States where the international students contribute 17.7 billion US dollars in almost each year (Potts, 2015). Growth in higher education worldwide is also among other factors that instigate migration of the international students (Chadee, D. D., & Cutler, J. 1996; Gardiner et al, 2013). Just like the United States, the sender and the host countries might record economic growth in some of the countries and can as well show the effect of the institutional programs made with the aim of incentivizing enrolment of international students’ migration (Kim et al, 2007). In the 1980s, Romania was among the top ten countries that hosted the international students but it lost the chance after 1989 when they failed to effect the changes in the international higher education market (Pan, 2013). In most of the instances, the USA tops in the list of the favorite destination to the international students in the previous decades. Though European countries are as well getting in the mix as the number of international students they absorb increases due to the European Union’s efforts of encouraging students’ mobility (Brooks, R., Waters, J., & Pimlott?Wilson, H., 2012). Both genders of the students are mobile as in the past, particularly in the African countries, male students were encouraged and even supported to travel overseas but in the recent past, things have changed and female students are as well supported to study overseas by government and other non-governmental bodies.

Background

Major objective of this study was to investigate the motives or factors influencing university students to travel overseas. This formed the center of attention for this study and from which specific objectives were drawn.

1. To determine the motives why male university students travel overseas
2. To determine the motives why female university students travel overseas
3. To determine the differences amidst male and female university students travel overseas
4. To determine the relationship between male and female students travel overseas

This forms the part of the research study that will give the instruments that were used to gather data that were used for the validation of this study. When carrying out the research, depending on what the researcher needs to find out with the research, the research study can either be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative research gives the ideal phenomenon of the phases of the research and tries to elucidate the entire picture of what is studied (Holloway & Galvin, 2016). On the other hand, quantitative research always gives the researcher with explicated picture of the anticipation from the research and basically gives focused description relatively accurate conclusion.

Since the study is focusing on what is making the students to travel overseas, this aim tends to explain the behavior of students and then to leverage and gets to the bottom causes, qualitative study is used. University students formed the targeted population where a sample of 16 students was taken. Small sample size was preferred for its cost effectiveness over large sample. Surveys were used to collect data from the respondents after which their responses were recorded and later transferred in the excel worksheet. Since every respondent had their own opinions to the interview research questions, variety of responses were obtained for each interview question. This method of data collection gathers variety of data since the respondents are free to express their minds as from the open ended questions used. Different from the closed ended questions which have fixed number or specific responses as designed by the researcher, open ended questions do not have specific responses designed by the researcher but are wholly obtained from the participants leading to collection of qualitative data. Even though the qualitative data are bulky, they are usually detailed.

Open codes were used in the codding of the data from the students, they were from the number of questions used, variables were drawn from them where the researcher came up with some of the categories from the participants’ responses that were closely related or had the same meaning (Flick, 2014). For example, to the question asked to the respondents whether they were male or female, a variable gender was created and the associated responses being that the responses gathered from that question was either male or female, for those who responded with male were coded 1 and those who responded with female coded 2. This was done so to bring distinction between those responses provided by the respondents and to specifically show the number of males and females that participated in the study. And in order to ensure for full representation of the respondents’ responses, proofread and rereading of the categories identified in the open coding takes the next course of action in axial coding. This makes it easier and simpler for the true picture of the data captured (Bluhm, D. J., Harman, W., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R., 2011). All these were used in the data organization in the data analysis process. The data will be analyzed using the SPSS version 20 where the qualitative data after codding were represented in charts and tables for analysis and better understanding of data.

Table 1: Gender of respondents
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
	male	8	50.0	50.0	50.0
female	8	50.0	50.0	100.0
Total	16	100.0	100.0

Motives for University Students’ Travel Overseas

(From excel file qualitative data, 2018)

Fifty percent of the respondents were male students while the remaining 50% represented female students. This gave equal chances to know exactly the traveling behaviors of both genders in regards to travelling.

Table 2: Type of students
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
	domestic	8	50.0	50.0	50.0
international	8	50.0	50.0	100.0
Total	16	100.0	100.0

(From excel file qualitative data, 2018)

Among the respondents, there was 50% domestic students and 50% international students as captured in the above table. Growth in higher education worldwide have resulted to having international students migrating to the universities in other host countries.

Table 3: Tourist type
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
	individual	3	18.8	18.8	18.8
backpacker	2	12.5	12.5	31.3
must travel with friends of families	10	62.5	62.5	93.8
must travel with organized group tours	1	6.3	6.3	100.0
Total	16	100.0	100.0

(From excel file qualitative data, 2018)

In the provided data, type of tourist was categorized into six where 18.8% of the respondents responded that they like to travel individually, 12.5% responded that they like the backpacker travel while whooping proportion of 62.5% represented those who must travel with friends or families and 6.3% represented those who preferred to travel with organized groups. Each tourist type have got their own advantages and disadvantages and that is why they are preferred differently by the traveling students

Figure 1 gives the reasons or motives why male and female students travel overseas. Some of the male students travelled overseas to pay visit to their family members, another proportion of the male students traveled overseas for sports activities as some mentioned as shown in the figure that they went to play cricket in England and also to watch football in countries like England, Spain and Italy. Moreover, they as well travelled to other countries for socialization with the locals and learn their cultural values such as their languages, history, music etc. also, adventure took the stage for the reasons of travel overseas by male students and also study.

Female students were as well represented in the same (figure 1) where there reasons for travel overseas were labelled. A proportion of female students travelled overseas for family holidays and socialization particularly in the summer seasons. They as well travelled overseas to learn new culture and to make new food and have their taste as prepared by the locals. Female students took delicacies seriously as that was highly memorable to majority of them. Further, they also enjoyed the adventure, shopping in some of the good shopping centers in their destinations and also purposely travel to study overseas.

Despite the fact that both genders of students enjoy travelling overseas, their motives of travel may slightly differ in regards to the roles they play in the society. To begin with, from figure 1, majority of the sampled students responded that they travelled overseas for sporting activities, either watching or actively taking part in the activities. On the other hand, female students mostly travel overseas to indulge the food delicacies and learn how to make them as revealed in this study. Though this might not be the case for everyone, lifestyle plays a big role in the center of interest that makes students to travel overseas.

Results

In as much as lifestyle of male and female students might have influence in their motives of traveling overseas, there are some common interest for both genders and these similarities are socializing with new people, to enjoy new cultural practices from the locals or hosting countries and finally for studies (figure1 and table 1, qualitative data from excel file, 2018)

As the university students travel overseas for various activities, in their transportation, accommodation and many other activities they were incurring costs which in turn resulted to economic growth in their host countries (Potts, 2015). Other than the USA, countries like Japan, Australia and others had really been preferred by the traveling students for various reason such as cheap cost of transportation.

Conclusions

To conclude, university students travel overseas for various reasons and the motives vary from one to another depending on their gender and activities. Students therefore reside in their host countries temporarily until they are done with the activities. Globalization have had impact on mobility of the students and other skilled personnel making travelling easy for them. Students therefore travel to explore different cultures, socialize with different people and also to study in the higher learning institutions since they have greatly improved across the globe.

Economic growth is realized by the hosting countries as at the time of visit by the students, they incur the expenses for their sustenance until when they will return which in turn boosts the economy. Countries therefore enjoy benefits from university students’ travel.

References

Bluhm, D. J., Harman, W., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (2011). Qualitative research in management: A decade of progress. Journal of Management Studies, 48(8), 1866-1891.

Brooks, R., Waters, J., & Pimlott?Wilson, H. (2012). International education and the employability of UK students. British Educational Research Journal, 38(2), 281-298.

Chadee, D. D., & Cutler, J. (1996). Insights into international travel by students. Journal of Travel Research, 35(2), 75-80.

Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Sage.

Forsey, M., Broomhall, S., & Davis, J. (2012). Broadening the mind? Australian student reflections on the experience of overseas study. Journal of Studies in International Education, 16(2), 128-139.

Gardiner, S., King, B., & Wilkins, H. (2013). The travel behaviours of international students: Nationality-based constraints and opportunities. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 19(4), 287-299.

Holloway, I., & Galvin, K. (2016). Qualitative research in nursing and healthcare. John Wiley & Sons.

Kim, K., Oh, I. K., & Jogaratnam, G. (2007). College student travel: A revised model of push motives. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 13(1), 73-85.

Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The modern language journal, 98(1), 296-311.

Lin, Y. H., Lee, Y. C., & Wang, S. C. (2012). Analysis of motivation, travel risk, and travel satisfaction of Taiwan undergraduates on work and travel overseas programmes: Developing measurement scales. Tourism Management Perspectives, 2, 35-46.

Pan, S. Y. (2013). China’s approach to the international market for higher education students: strategies and implications. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 35(3), 249-263.

Potts, D. (2015). Understanding the early career benefits of learning abroad programs. Journal of Studies in International Education, 19(5), 441-459.

Roberts, M. J., Perera, M., Lawrentschuk, N., Romanic, D., Papa, N., & Bolton, D. (2015). Globalization of continuing professional development by journal clubs via microblogging: a systematic review. Journal of medical Internet research, 17(4).

Shields, R. (2013). Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 609-636.