International student flows to Asian destinations: a multi-stage assessment of trends, transformations and push–pull factors

This research aims to offer an integrative picture of contemporary international student flows into Asian higher education (HE) destinations. It undertakes a year-on-year analysis of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) dataset of the recent 2013–2022/23 timeline to quantify and compare shifts in student mobility to four regions and eight countries. The findings reveal (i) the remarkable upsurge in inbound mobility pertaining to the ‘Western Asia’ region, buoyed mainly by the fourfold increase in student mobility to Turkey and the UAE, (ii) the steady increase in international student flows to frontrunners China and Japan and (iii) the perceptible international student source region multipolarity in several Asian receiving countries. Empirical studies examining the push-pull dynamics in major Asian destinations are reviewed and then synthesised into a configuration of consumption values, namely, conditional, social, emotional and functional (quality/performance and price/value) to gain a consumer purchase behaviour standpoint. Such a synthesis is an effort to go beyond the linear set of external (macro-focused) factors accentuated in westward mobility-led choice models.