Factors Influencing The Academic Satisfaction Of Foreign Graduate Students In China

Internalization is one of the objectives of developing Chinese higher education.One of the goals written in "Outline of the National Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan(2010-2020)" is to provide high quality graduate education for the foreign graduate students.In order to realize the goal,a lot of government and universities provided a large amount of scholarship.With growing number of foreign students,the proportion of students who obtained degrees of the post-secondary education increased,then the group of foreign graduate students in China's universities can hardly be ignored.The academic satisfaction and academic progress of the foreign graduate students are important aspects to measure the level of international education in China.In this study,the foreign graduate students from university A,a high-level research university in Shanghai,are sampled.The study analyzed the factors influencing their academic satisfaction,meanwhile,the mediating effects of the academic satisfaction and achievements in the academic progress were discussed.There are four findings of this study:First,the academic satisfaction of the foreign postgraduates receiving scholarships in China is significantly higher than the those without scholarships;However,economic level of the origin country,gender,and the academic degree has no significant influence on foreign student's academic satisfaction.Second,the degree of familiarity with China has positive impacts on the academic satisfaction of postgraduates in China.Third,the hardware level of the departments,the scientific atmosphere in faculties,the cross-cultural adaptation,and the communication between supervisors and students have positive impacts on the academic satisfaction of foreign postgraduate students.Fourth,the development of writing skills and independent learning ability have positive impacts on their academic progress,while graduation barriers are positively affected by the satisfaction of GPA and the rankings but negatively influenced by GPA self-evaluation.According to the conclusion of this study,there are several implications for the academic progress theories.Considering the features of the foreign postgraduates in China,this study expanded the scope of application of the Conceptual Model of Graduate Student Degree Progress by incorporating foreign postgraduates' intercultural academic adaptation.The findings of this study also provide five implications for policy makers:a.To pay attention to the factors influencing academic satisfaction;b.To diversify academic scholarships;c.To improve the hardware level of the department;d.To enrich the scientific research atmosphere in the faculties;e.To reduce the pressure of supervisors and to enhance the overall capability of guidance of universities.These policy suggestions would help improve the quality of international education through increasing the academic satisfaction of foreign postgraduate students.