Examining the relationships between quality assurance, training needs and choice of study destination amongs Nigerian students in UUM

Several studies identified quality of education as a major criteria influencing international students’ choice of study destination. But only recently has it seems to have gain a huge momentum by emerging as a theme which involves empirical studies. However, despite such momentum previous studies do not provide sufficient evidence linking quality assurance and international student’s choice of study destination. This research work therefore presents a study of international student’s perception of higher education quality assurance practices, as well as how it affects their choice of study destination. The work examined how training needs play a role in influencing such choice also it extensively reviewed previous studies a well as model in the area of quality assurance, training needs and university choice. The work therefore, identified six dimensions of quality assurance in education: “tangibles” “competence” “attitude’ contends”; “delivery”; “and “reliability” as well as three dimensions of training needs such “occupational” “organizational” and “individual” needs hence it developed nine hypotheses to explain the relationship between quality assurance, training needs and choice of study destination using the above dimensions; the work generate the data for the study through a cross-sectional survey, the data was collected from Nigerian students in university utara Malaysia through the distribution of questionnaires, the data was analysed and interpreted through Partial Least Squares (PLS), to determine the relationship involved. In the context of this study, researcher using simple Random Sampling to identify and select the respondents Based on Krejcie and Morgan (1970), a total of 150 respondents were selected. The result supported only three of the nine hypotheses .it therefore concludes with Implications and recommendations to stimulate further studies on study destination choice by the international students from other countries