Internationalising Malaysia’s educational space: The socio-cultural experiences of international students at Universiti Utara Malaysia

Malaysia today aspires to be a regional hub of higher education where internationalization is believed to be the best empowerment approach to catapult the country’s higher education to world class. Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) meets the challenges of internationalization by offering learning opportunities to international students. The purpose of this study is to analyse socio-cultural problems faced and posed by international students in UUM’s Maybank Hall Student Accommodation. Primary data came from the responses of 182 students who were randomly selected to represent 43% of the population in a questionnaire survey. It was found that (1) most of the international students surveyed did not encounter any socio-cultural problems, especially students from Indonesia; (2) there was a similarity in the scale of cultural distance between the a students’ home country and Malaysia; and (3) socio-cultural problems sometimes posed by international students revolved around language, ethics, hygiene and the accommodation environment. In conclusion, the more socio-cultural similarities existed between the students’place of origin with Malaysia, and the shorter the distance between their country of origin and Malaysia, the less likely the international students were to pose serious socio-cultural problems.