Exploring International Faculty’s Perspectives on Their Campus Life by PLS-SEM

Abstract

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.