• Energy Research

Student mobility is one of the most important indicators to reflect institutional internationalization in a sustainable higher education system. Student mobility issues have been addressed in previous studies, and the phenomenon was discussed in association with related factors persistently. Since higher education sustainable development has received much scholarly attention, monitoring student mobility flows to adjust international strategies is necessary. This study explored practical approaches to detect student mobility flows in the process of higher education expansion. Targeting Taiwan’s higher education system as an example, we addressed the topic of system expansion and the core issues of student mobility. Target series data were collected from 1950 to 2021, including the economic growth ratio, GDP per capita, higher education enrollment, gross enrollment ratio (GER), and the number of inbound and outbound students. The data were transformed with index formats, for example, the economic growth ratio, enrollment increasing ratio (IR), and net flow ratio. The cross-correlation function (CCF) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) were used to determine the correlations of the series data and their future trends. The findings suggested that the system expansion, with GER and IR, might reflect fluctuated student mobility in economic growth. This study confirmed that the time series approaches work well in detecting the phenomena of higher education expansion and their effects on student mobility flow in the future.

In this study, we designed a structural model to determine the relationships among push–pull factors, institutional situations, and satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 17 selected indicators fell under five domains, namely push factors, pull factors, institutional leadership, international strategies, and satisfaction. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to verify the assumptions of the model. Based on 1005 degree-seeking international students’ views, this study found that push and pull factors may coincidentally exist, and their functions can be modified by institutional situations. The findings suggested pull factors will, through institutional leadership, impact students’ satisfaction, while push factors will not. Moreover, the detection of institutional mediation can provide useful information for specific institutes to develop their future recruiting or retaining strategies. These findings enriched our knowledge of the field for higher education sustainable development. For future studies, this design may be useful to interpret the phenomena of global student mobility in higher education settings.

Entrepreneurship has been viewed as an opportunity for economic development and changing economic scenarios in global markets. Women are viewed as a reservoir of entrepreneurial talent, so they can be growth engines in novel markets. Previous studies have considered entrepreneurship as the most effective way towards the economic empowerment of women. Female students engaged in entrepreneurial education have been addressed persistently, while what transforms them in an education process is still unclear. Considering the transforming global economy and its influence on higher education, this study aims to detect female students transforming entrepreneurial competency, mindset, and intention into sustainable entrepreneurship. Using a self-compiled survey, we targeted 752 female students to investigate their entrepreneurial competency, mindset, and intention. SPSS and AMOS were used to transform the data for interpretation. We assumed that the impact of female students’ entrepreneurial competency could be modified by an entrepreneurial mindset and result in entrepreneurial intention. To detect this causal relationship, this study employed reliability, factor, structural equation modeling (SEM), and bootstrap-ping analyses to verify the evidence. The result of the SEM confirms that female students’ entrepreneurial competency will, through their entrepreneurial mindset, impact entrepreneurial intention. With bootstrapping, 5000 samples were collected, and it was demonstrated that the measure constructs were still reliable in the model. This study found that there is a mediation effect between entrepreneurial competency and entrepreneurial intention. The entrepreneurial mindset plays a crucial role in the transformation process. Without an entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial competency cannot exert a significant effect on entrepreneurial intention. The findings can help reinvent related entrepreneurial education in higher education.

Attracting and retaining international students has been widely discussed in higher education settings. Increasing the number of international students has become an indispensable strategy for national and global competition. This study focuses on effective strategies and international students’ issues regarding satisfaction in the most popular STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs. We designed a structural equation modeling (SEM) method to determine the effect of institutional mediation between push factors and satisfaction factors for the development of better strategies by which to attract and retain international students. This study employed a self-designed questionnaire to collect data: 485 degree-seeking international students in STEM programs were invited and successfully participated in this study during spring 2021 in Taiwan. IBM SPSS 26 and AMOS 26 (Analysis of Moment Structure) were used to carry out the data analysis. We employed reliability, factor, and SEM analyses. This study assumed that the impact of push factors could be modified by institutional situations and result in international students’ satisfaction with their learning and environment and regarding migration policy. The results revealed that the predictors, mediation, and criteria were significant at the 0.05 or 0.01 levels. The findings suggest that push factors impact international students’ satisfaction when using institutional leadership and strategy. The results of the bootstrap with a generalized least-squares method showed that the SEM model fit in 2000 bootstrap samples. The effect of institutional mediation can provide useful information for STEM programs to boost their future recruitment and retention strategies. This study provides an innovative approach to the detection of issues among international students in specific programs. The design of the study can be extended to similar higher education settings. These findings can enrich our knowledge regarding attracting and retaining global students in higher education.

The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of international faculty members on their life in higher education institutions (HEIs). The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted not only most citizens’ lives but also the international faculty members’ lives during this period. Since building sustainable campuses has become a priority for various HEIs, attracting and maintaining international faculty have become the focus of various internationalized campuses. However, the issue of international faculty’s satisfaction is still neglected in higher education. Using a self-compiled online survey, we collected 80 international faculty members of HEIs in Taiwan to investigate this issue. About 31.25% of the responses were collected by the online survey technique. The survey covered the career and professional status, teaching and research status, and demographics of the faculty. This study proposed a novel conceptual framework for addressing international faculty’s campus life, the design of which examined the relationships among working conditions, views of institutions, views of government measures, and levels of satisfaction through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The demographic profile of the participants revealed that (a) most international faculty are employed full-time as lecturers or assistant professors in most public universities and (b) most international faculty members earned their first degree outside of Taiwan; however, 66% of them earned their post-doctoral degrees in Taiwan. The result of the PLS-SEM confirms that the international faculty’s perspective of government, through their current work satisfaction, impacts overall satisfaction. This study found a mediation effect in the testing model. The design of the study can be extended to other higher education settings to tackle similar issues.

The allocation of funding for higher education typically focuses on competition in neoliberal mechanisms. Surprisingly, much less attention has been paid to considering the effect of fund allocations for sustainable development through public goods purposes in neoliberal contexts. This study aims to examine specific funding schemes and determine the influential factors impacting funding for teaching, research, and public goods transformation. Taking Taiwan’s Higher Education Sprout Project (HESP) as an example, we explored the effect of policy initiatives on public goods transformation towards sustainable development. The data were collected from the Ministry of Education and Scopus databases. First, a regression analysis was conducted to determine which factors influence the effect of funding allocations in academic institutes. Second, we used a logistic regression to detect the effects of the system and the sector. Third, we used partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to explore the causal effects among the selected impact variables on expected outcomes. Finally, we used the bootstrap method to demonstrate the model’s robustness. Our study found that only diversity was shown in private technology groups receiving less HESP funding, while it did not widen the differences in the sector and system in the transformation process. Our findings suggest that funding allocations will not affect teaching and research based on sectors and systems. In contrast, this study demonstrates that transforming public goods through special funding can play a critical role in leading sustainable development in higher education.

Civic engagement refers to the ways that citizens participate in the life of a community to help shape its future or improve conditions for others. While it might have been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, this study explored how college students perceive civic engagement on selected campuses that were partially locked down. We sampled 1036 student volunteers from six universities in Taiwan by using a self-designed module of civic engagement and transferable capabilities. The Student’s t-test, ANOVA, regression, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to interpret the differences and relationships among these variables. This study provides a more detailed example of the current status of civic engagement and its relationship to transferable capabilities in a higher education setting. The related programs and institutions should take responsibility for enhancing students’ civic engagement and transferable capabilities during the pandemic. How to ameliorate the situation? The findings suggest that it is necessary to consider a student’s academic major, learning experiences in the department, and time spent on related activities during the pandemic recovery. The findings might prove useful to various campuses for enhancing ongoing practices for sustainable development.

Ensuring equal access to affordable higher education for women and men has become a crucial target of the UN’s SDG 5, while gender disparity persists in various systems. This study employed per capita GDP, the gross enrollment ratio (GER), and the gender parity index (GPI) to demonstrate how higher-education systems have expanded, resulting in the transformation of gender parity. We selected Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the UK as research targets, using both cross correlation functions and trend analyses to compare the progress of higher-education systems. Considering the economic factor impacting higher-education expansion, this study found that the series of per capita GDP impacted the GERs in emerging economies, for example, Korea and Taiwan. Both the growth of per capita GDP and the extension of the GERs changed the patterns of the GPIs. The gap in gender diversity was found to be diminishing in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, while the UK could be a unique case, in that females have become a critical mass in higher education. The results of the comparison suggested that gender disparity is likely to continue in Japan, Korea, and the UK in the future. The framework for monitoring gender parity progress is not limited to high-participation higher-education systems, and it can be extended to tackle similar issues in middle- or lower-income regions.