International Students in Russian Universities: Study Motivations, Friendships, and Satisfaction Level

Annotation The current study is focusing on educational motivations, friendships and satisfaction of international students enrolled to Russian universities both part-time and full-degree. The main research question is what is the structure of study abroad motivations, friendship networks and satisfaction of international students? The framework developed by Gardner and Lambert [Gardner, Lambert, 1972] and applied by Yu and Downing [Yu, Downing, 2012] is used to analyze the structures of study abroad motivations and satisfactions of international students, dividing between the ones of integrative and instrumental nature. Functional theory developed by Bochner et al. [Bochner, McLeod, Anli Lin, 1977] and extended by Furnham and Alibnai [Furnham, Alibhai, 1985] is applied to examine the structure of friendships. 156 students from 47 countries participated in the study. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were applied. It was found that the motivational structures were similar for exchange and full-degree students, but bear some conceptual differences. The factors comprising satisfactions of exchange students were of more emotional nature, whereas factors for full-degree students had more of a practical component. The motivational model for full-degree students demonstrated that ‘Education and Affordability’ was an important factor, influencing both general level of satisfaction and satisfaction with studies through affecting satisfaction with courses and professors and satisfaction with everyday life. The analysis of mean numbers of co-national, international and host-national friends showed that unlike the hypotheses supposed, the mean number of co-national friends was the lowest of all groups. However, co-nationals were the most often nominated as ‘close friends’.